Secret Service Agent: I Was Assigned to President Bush's Security Detail After 9/11 | Ep. 308 | Ep. 308

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[UNKNOWN]: We were in Seven World Trade Center.

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[UNKNOWN]: That's where I filled off this bus.

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[UNKNOWN]: All the junior guys were in the gym early.

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[UNKNOWN]: We got to be there earlier in everybody else.

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[UNKNOWN]: And that first plane came in.

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[UNKNOWN]: We felt it.

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[UNKNOWN]: and I didn't know what that was, but I knew that wouldn't happen.

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[UNKNOWN]: We needed to go in the trade center and help people get out.

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[UNKNOWN]: Those went from special agents to the first responder, like in a moment of suspense.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's about the 30th floor or so.

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[UNKNOWN]: The floor was full of New York City firemen.

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[UNKNOWN]: And they were a beaten, bloody, haggard.

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[UNKNOWN]: You could tell they had been in the fight, all right, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: I hear their fire commander say, get your gear together boys before I back up.

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[UNKNOWN]: I have no way of knowing for sure, but I can always assume that they're part of the 343, New York City Firefighters should die back then.

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[UNKNOWN]: at this time to what I call an inch of the bill.

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[UNKNOWN]: I can hear you, the rest of the world, hear you, and the people who are not being bailing stand while hearing all of us soon.

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[UNKNOWN]: These guys are going to go home and say, well, I hear you.

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[UNKNOWN]: And the American people hear you.

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[UNKNOWN]: This is the moment that launched thousands of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and to generate what we did know at the time would be a generation.

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[UNKNOWN]: Here's the crazy thing.

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[UNKNOWN]: Ladies and gentlemen, as always, it's both an honor and a pleasure to welcome my next guest to the podcast.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's a retired special agent with the US Secret Service from the year 2002-2025.

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[UNKNOWN]: He was at the Twin Towers during the 9-11 attacks, earning the Secret Service Medal of Aller, protective detail for George W. Bush and a member of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's the author of Barry Me in a dirty suit and founder of fierce faith.

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[UNKNOWN]: What's the last book that you've read?

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[UNKNOWN]: Oh, the last book, the last full book that I read.

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[UNKNOWN]: The British are coming by Rick Atkinson.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's a great historian.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm a history nerd.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm a history super nerd.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it's his first installment.

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[UNKNOWN]: I think it's going to be a trilogy of the American Revolution.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so that this was installment one just fascinating.

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[UNKNOWN]: The personalities that were involved, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: And then, you know, it gets in this particular book, it's into

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[UNKNOWN]: Essentially, if I haven't read about the first two years of the conflict itself, where we did nothing but lose, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: I mean, George Washington did nothing but lose as a general for years, but we start to figure it out.

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[UNKNOWN]: And so that's installment one.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm looking forward to the next one.

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[UNKNOWN]: Right now, though, I'm into a book called Sword and the Cemetery, a book by Raymond Ibrahim.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's a, like, a copter Christian historian.

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[UNKNOWN]: And the byline on it is really interesting.

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[UNKNOWN]: A 1,400 years of war between Islam and the West.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it just goes back to its military history for that time period, about starts, about 600 AD.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it's really wild.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's really eye-opening.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: Who's the author of that?

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[UNKNOWN]: Raymond Ibrahim.

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[UNKNOWN]: Raymond Ibrahim.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'll check that out.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: That's great.

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[UNKNOWN]: And he's got several other books as well.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: That's awesome.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: A favorite quote.

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[UNKNOWN]: Hmm.

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[UNKNOWN]: The old-pression military general of Bont and Mopka.

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[UNKNOWN]: I think I'm saying that name right.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know how to had a famous saying, you know, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

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[UNKNOWN]: But I prefer Mike Tyson's version of that.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: Every man has a plan.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's like it's punched in the face.

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[UNKNOWN]: And words I try to live by, it's about being flexible, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: It's about living in the reality that life just gets upside down and dark sometimes, and punches in the face, and you've got to have a plant.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, the military equivalent is Murphy's law.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's kind of the same thing, but...

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[UNKNOWN]: Absolutely.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, it seems like it's a pretty parallel thing, no matter what you do, really.

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[UNKNOWN]: man.

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[UNKNOWN]: I had to be outdoors, you know, I had an older brother who's three years older, outdoors all the time, but it was things like camping, fishing, hiking, either riding bikes around the neighborhood, football, basketball, you name it, you know, fights, back then, you know, you and I are the same generation, back then, you know,

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[UNKNOWN]: the guys you hung out with and you were closest with, you actually ended up fighting sometimes.

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[UNKNOWN]: Real fights.

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[UNKNOWN]: And my boys today just don't even understand that concept and things have changed quite a bit.

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[UNKNOWN]: So all of that, man, it just had to be out toward, I lived a group in Central Virginia, not realizing.

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[UNKNOWN]: how good I had it.

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[UNKNOWN]: If we got in the car and drove two hours to the east, we were at Virginia Beach.

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[UNKNOWN]: Awesome, you know, I'm body surfing and having a good day at the beach.

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[UNKNOWN]: Or we could drive two hours to the west and we're in the Appalachian Mountains.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's a two hours either way.

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[UNKNOWN]: And we're in mountains or ocean.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I just didn't realize, I took it for granted.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: It's interesting.

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[UNKNOWN]: I mean, the California is much that same way, even more condensed, and if you live 20 minutes inland from the coast, it's 20 minutes to the beach or an hour to the mountains or that same kind of close proximity thing.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: Was there a sport that you excelled at growing up?

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, I try them all, except for football.

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[UNKNOWN]: I never really got into football, but, you know, I was supposed to be a good baseball player, because I was left handed.

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[UNKNOWN]: That's what I was told.

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[UNKNOWN]: My older brother was left handed, and he was a really good baseball player.

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[UNKNOWN]: He was a really good pitcher.

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[UNKNOWN]: And one day, I think it was about 13.

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[UNKNOWN]: I didn't, so I didn't make high school baseball.

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[UNKNOWN]: But I was about 13, and my baseball career basically ended when I gave up a home, I was on the mound.

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[UNKNOWN]: Left handed, it's supposed to build a pitch.

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[UNKNOWN]: And give up a home run.

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[UNKNOWN]: And Coach comes out since you're good, you know, everything, I'm good, I'm just, you know, got lucky.

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[UNKNOWN]: literally Mike next pitch to the next batter over the fence back to back there and he comes out again says yeah yeah you're done kid and that was my last pitching appearance on the mouth but but not I got into basketball I swam competitively for for most of my childhood and then I had you know played played soccer is odd I enjoyed soccer when I was younger

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[UNKNOWN]: then got distracted with other things and left it really for five or six, I don't know, maybe seven or eight years, didn't even go back to it.

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[UNKNOWN]: Until my senior year of high school, I was playing varsity basketball, I had a coach that just honestly ruined the game for me, it was just, it was miserable.

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[UNKNOWN]: I decided, you know what, I'm not gonna play basketball my senior year of high school.

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[UNKNOWN]: And my parents are like, are you crazy?

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[UNKNOWN]: So now I had free time,

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[UNKNOWN]: And my friend, my good friend, who was a really good soccer player, he said, hey, we could use one more on this club soccer team.

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[UNKNOWN]: I like to do that in play soccer in eight years.

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[UNKNOWN]: And they didn't know what to do with me.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I went out there and all I was fast and perfectly willing to crash my body into anything that moved.

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[UNKNOWN]: And my coach was like, I think we could find something for you.

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[UNKNOWN]: Anyways, I was pretty successful at it.

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[UNKNOWN]: next thing I know the next semester I'm actually trying out for the high school soccer team as a senior and go on to start every game and have a successful senior year on a with a sport that I had long forgotten it's pretty funny yeah natural aptitude was there a catalyst or a significant event that kind of drove you in the direction to want to

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[UNKNOWN]: to serve because you wanted to join the Navy and they disqualified you but just that general kind of frame of mind What was the Again the catalyst for wanting to go that route.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know

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[UNKNOWN]: We grew up in Central Virginia, and I did like childhood for the most part.

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[UNKNOWN]: We had some family stuff with the voice later as I got into junior high, but my brother and I had a front row seat to service, who really did.

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[UNKNOWN]: My father worked for the state of Virginia for a department that served the blind.

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[UNKNOWN]: And he did that for many, many years and did it well.

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[UNKNOWN]: That had an impact on me.

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[UNKNOWN]: My mother was a registered nurse, and she wasn't taking care of her kids at home.

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[UNKNOWN]: She was nursing.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I think both of us just kind of, I don't know, kind of had service in our bones, really, from a very early age.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it was very clear to me, my brother at gosh, I don't know, by nine or ten years old, my brother was gonna be a cop.

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[UNKNOWN]: He was on that track, the law enforcement.

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[UNKNOWN]: He just knew.

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[UNKNOWN]: And again, for me, at about the same age, by 10 or 11 years old, I knew I was going to be a military.

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[UNKNOWN]: It was just, that was a given.

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[UNKNOWN]: And didn't have a law enforcement background in our family.

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[UNKNOWN]: Had a little bit of a military history in our family, but not much.

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[UNKNOWN]: But we just both felt naturally called to that.

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[UNKNOWN]: My brother would go on, he's the real cop in the family.

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[UNKNOWN]: He would go on to be a police officer in the county that we grew up in for a gosh.

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[UNKNOWN]: I think 26 years, at least, retired as a lieutenant and very successful career and you do that job for a long time and I don't care where you are.

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[UNKNOWN]: You're going to see a lot of dark things and have to handle yourself and he did great.

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[UNKNOWN]: And that door was closed for me.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, I was, I was going to go Navy ROTC.

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[UNKNOWN]: but just kind of lazy and not driven if I'm being honest, didn't pursue it that hard.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, my father laid the options out in front of me and just didn't go after it.

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[UNKNOWN]: And so then I'm going to college and buy my sophomore junior year college.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, yep, okay, there's this thing called OCS.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm gonna do that.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm gonna graduate college.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'll put in for OCS.

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[UNKNOWN]: So my senior year rolls around.

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[UNKNOWN]: And, yeah, I didn't do any research, didn't have the internet in that hard to believe.

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[UNKNOWN]: And, just started to inquire.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, at that point, I'm choosing Marines or Navy in my mind, that's as simple as that.

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[UNKNOWN]: And man, I just started the process and I didn't last long, like, by long, I mean minutes.

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[UNKNOWN]: I was medically, medically, ineligible because I had asthma.

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[UNKNOWN]: at the time.

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[UNKNOWN]: I think that the rule of the time was after age 13 if you had it or something and I was still using inhaler to control it.

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[UNKNOWN]: I mean, no one told me about waivers, no one told me that you can actually fight this and appeal this.

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[UNKNOWN]: I just kind of took it as it was.

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[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, that door was closed and that was hard to take.

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[UNKNOWN]: Hard to take age 21, age 22 and you've got one

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[UNKNOWN]: Well, yeah, I mean, so what does hearing that as a 2021 year old that has one plan?

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, how do you handle that?

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, because I had one plan, you know, I was fixated, luckily.

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[UNKNOWN]: I mean, so how did I handle it?

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[UNKNOWN]: I kind of rolled with it.

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[UNKNOWN]: I'm pretty laid back before I joined the Secret Service, I was more laid back.

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[UNKNOWN]: And they beat that out of me.

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[UNKNOWN]: And then, you know, I was, I was getting a teaching degree.

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[UNKNOWN]: I had just done finished my student teaching semester, because you know, you got to get something there.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I enjoyed it.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I enjoyed interacting with the kids, and I liked it.

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[UNKNOWN]: So, you know,

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[UNKNOWN]: It was my fallback plan when I didn't know I had a fallback plan and I didn't know I needed one and and so I fell back I fell back into that plan and At what point did you I guess realize or come to the conclusion that joining the secret service was the next step?

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean at that time yeah, I couldn't I couldn't have spelled it.

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[UNKNOWN]: I couldn't have told you what it was what they do

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[UNKNOWN]: Maybe a movie reference, you know?

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[UNKNOWN]: I was just teaching school, I was teaching high school history, like I said, I'm a history nerd, loved it, coaching, JV basketball, I mean, just really, really living the dream and really enjoying it.

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[UNKNOWN]: But I knew really on, I knew within my first year actually.

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[UNKNOWN]: that it wasn't my calling.

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[UNKNOWN]: It wasn't my long-term calling.

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[UNKNOWN]: That I could do this, not could do it well, but I was either going to be on the road to burn out.

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[UNKNOWN]: You do one thing that you don't feel called to forever, you get burned out.

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[UNKNOWN]: Or I was going to have to switch horses, midstream, and do something completely different.

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[UNKNOWN]: And so,

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[UNKNOWN]: coolest part.

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[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'm a man of faith, and I don't believe in consequent, and what's where I'm looking for.

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[UNKNOWN]: It coincides in this guy.

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[UNKNOWN]: This guy is in my, the teacher's lounge that I'm done at my school.

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[UNKNOWN]: And who's this guy?

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[UNKNOWN]: I introduced myself, and he was a secret service agent, and he was the neighbor of a guy that I taught school with.

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[UNKNOWN]: And he was in the school that day to, uh, to teach, to speak to government classes or something.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like,

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[UNKNOWN]: Seeker service.

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[UNKNOWN]: I bet I asked him like a hundred questions, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: And at the end he's like, look here, I got to go.

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[UNKNOWN]: I go teach his next class.

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[UNKNOWN]: But here's my card.

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[UNKNOWN]: You're clearly interested.

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[UNKNOWN]: Here's my card.

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[UNKNOWN]: Give me a call.

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[UNKNOWN]: That's cool.

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[UNKNOWN]: That's awesome.

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[UNKNOWN]: This guy was really just an impressive guy, big guy, but just compassionate, but could handle himself.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, you just had that feeling.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I took that card home, I showed it to my wife, and she kind of chuckle.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I I opened up my bedside drawer when I put it in my bedside drawer and kind of forgot about it honestly, but Mike I'm telling him and like I said there was an uneasy feeling this was my calling although I was I was enjoying teaching and

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[UNKNOWN]: Every now and then I opened up that bedside drawer to put something in and I'd see that card.

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[UNKNOWN]: And it was just like kind of calling me.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I think about at least two years went by and finally I picked it up.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I said, tell them my wife, I'm going to call this guy.

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[UNKNOWN]: And she's like, yeah, I'm ready.

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[UNKNOWN]: Let's do it.

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[UNKNOWN]: And I began the process.

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[UNKNOWN]: How long did it take to get from when you made that decision to give them a call until you're actually foot in the door starting?

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I think at the time, at the time it was taking about an hour, about an hour, about a year, yeah, I wish it was an hour.

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[UNKNOWN]: About a year, there was like seven or eight stages of the hiring process.

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[UNKNOWN]: For me though, it took almost a year and a half.

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[UNKNOWN]: Because again my asthma thing was was throwing pop in some red flags.

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[UNKNOWN]: It wasn't an immediate EQ.

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[UNKNOWN]: I had to go through several different tests, put me on a treadmill with tubes in my mouth.

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[UNKNOWN]: You know, I kind of think all at my cost and my expense, which I thought was nice.

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[UNKNOWN]: I should have known something was up then.

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[UNKNOWN]: This was my, my welcome to the government.

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[UNKNOWN]: I got a little bit of a name.

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[UNKNOWN]: So I had to go through a few more hoops, but about a year and a half before I got an offer.

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[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

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[UNKNOWN]: What did your family say once you actually got accepted and you knew you were going?

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[UNKNOWN]: My dad was excited, my parents were split at that point and my father was unfortunately he was getting into the beginning stages of his alcoholism and stuff and so that was just just really hard dynamic there, he was a good dad, he was a really good dad.

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[UNKNOWN]: he was excited because I think he had something to brag about, right?

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[UNKNOWN]: Like all that.

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[UNKNOWN]: My mom was like, this is terrible, this is a bad idea, this bad idea.

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[UNKNOWN]: My brother was like, oh, you're going to be fed now, huh?

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[UNKNOWN]: Oh, you're going to be a fed.

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[UNKNOWN]: He's already, you know, a local police officer.

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[UNKNOWN]: And so that that rivalry was starting already in my wife.

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[UNKNOWN]: She, she just had adventure in her bones.

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[UNKNOWN]: Not many people know this about her.

15:32.343 --> 15:35.244
[UNKNOWN]: If you knew where they would be shocked, my wife had plans.

15:36.504 --> 15:41.945
[UNKNOWN]: Some Air Force recruiter got their hooks on her in college to be an Air Force nurse.

15:41.965 --> 15:43.965
[UNKNOWN]: To go into the Air Force as an officer and be an nurse.

15:44.305 --> 15:45.785
[UNKNOWN]: And that was her kind of loose plan.

15:45.825 --> 15:46.726
[UNKNOWN]: That was her intention.

15:47.526 --> 15:49.746
[UNKNOWN]: And then she met this guy.

15:49.806 --> 15:56.087
[UNKNOWN]: And she likes to say she changed her plan to move, I was a year ahead of her.

15:57.067 --> 15:59.128
[UNKNOWN]: And when she graduated, she kind of put that on the shelf.

15:59.148 --> 15:59.748
[UNKNOWN]: So she was up.

16:00.588 --> 16:01.228
[UNKNOWN]: She's up for anything.

16:01.609 --> 16:04.290
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, one of the coolest parts is you'll love this story.

16:07.371 --> 16:10.253
[UNKNOWN]: One of the last things they do before they hire you is a secret service agent.

16:10.593 --> 16:14.695
[UNKNOWN]: A supervisor and a regular agent comes to your house, literally to your house, and they do an interview.

16:15.276 --> 16:27.702
[UNKNOWN]: And they want the spouse, they want the family, everyone there, and they tell you, this is how it's going to be, and they paint a real picture, they say, you're going to miss birthdays and ball games and Christmas day, you know, and it's really good, it's fair.

16:29.013 --> 16:34.197
[UNKNOWN]: And so the interview goes well, and the boss of that office, he says at the end, look, I gotta be honest with you.

16:34.598 --> 16:36.960
[UNKNOWN]: If you get hired, you're probably gonna be sent to New York City.

16:37.780 --> 16:44.186
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just like, you know, if that's a deal breaker, you know, and my wife, just she just goes, oh, that would be amazing.

16:45.146 --> 16:48.929
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm just wheezing her hand, I can small-town Virginia, but I don't wanna go to New York City.

16:49.410 --> 16:51.772
[UNKNOWN]: I'm squeezing her hand, she looks at me like, what did I say?

16:52.552 --> 16:57.757
[UNKNOWN]: And they leave, and I look at her, I was like, we don't wanna go to New York, and she gets, you know, speak for yourself.

16:58.618 --> 17:08.528
[UNKNOWN]: And then, you know, about a week later, that same boss calls me, offers me the job from, you know, offering you a position as a special agent in the United States Secret Service in the New York Field Office.

17:09.229 --> 17:12.512
[UNKNOWN]: And he said, and don't tell me you need to talk to your wife, I already know what she thinks.

17:12.993 --> 17:13.854
[UNKNOWN]: Man, that's amazing.

17:14.495 --> 17:14.955
[UNKNOWN]: She said her.

17:15.035 --> 17:15.736
[UNKNOWN]: She said our course.

17:16.096 --> 17:16.297
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

17:16.517 --> 17:17.398
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

17:17.478 --> 17:19.020
[UNKNOWN]: Did anything surprise you about?

17:19.800 --> 17:28.007
[UNKNOWN]: I guess the academy from the day you stopped being a civilian and joined the academy until you're actually a bad, secret service agent.

17:28.027 --> 17:29.888
[UNKNOWN]: Did anything about that process surprise you?

17:33.391 --> 17:39.896
[UNKNOWN]: Honestly, if I'm being frank, it wasn't as physically demanding as I was anticipating.

17:40.636 --> 17:41.117
[UNKNOWN]: Now mind you,

17:42.636 --> 17:44.358
[UNKNOWN]: For other reasons, I was in the best shape of my life.

17:45.198 --> 17:46.940
[UNKNOWN]: Gosh, I was only 26 years old.

17:47.561 --> 17:50.564
[UNKNOWN]: I had really gotten into triathlon, kind of amateur triathlon.

17:50.584 --> 17:52.545
[UNKNOWN]: I had done maybe 30, 35 triathlon.

17:52.565 --> 17:58.051
[UNKNOWN]: So I was, because I loved the swim and I loved to run, I hated the bike, but...

17:58.411 --> 18:01.033
[UNKNOWN]: So I was expecting something physically, a little harder.

18:01.774 --> 18:13.644
[UNKNOWN]: But then on the same side, I was kind of overwhelmed at times, drinking from that fire hose, because having no military experience, and having no law enforcement experience, which is what they prefer.

18:14.044 --> 18:19.789
[UNKNOWN]: They prefer one of the two, but sometimes they let a guy like me in.

18:19.989 --> 18:22.431
[UNKNOWN]: I was learning, I was grabbing things for the first time.

18:22.691 --> 18:23.712
[UNKNOWN]: That allowed a guy's warrant.

18:24.773 --> 18:27.195
[UNKNOWN]: And so they've already got tools in their toolbox, right?

18:27.295 --> 18:27.755
[UNKNOWN]: Not a guy, none.

18:28.776 --> 18:30.677
[UNKNOWN]: Um, so that was that was challenging.

18:31.077 --> 18:33.599
[UNKNOWN]: One thing that surprised me was I didn't grow up with firearms in the home.

18:34.699 --> 18:36.560
[UNKNOWN]: Um, it just wasn't my dad's thing.

18:36.580 --> 18:37.501
[UNKNOWN]: We didn't hunt or anything.

18:38.321 --> 18:41.363
[UNKNOWN]: And, um, it's funny, both of his sons became law enforcement officers.

18:41.403 --> 18:46.105
[UNKNOWN]: But, um, I was surprised at how quickly I took to farm training.

18:46.185 --> 18:47.206
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, I love that.

18:47.246 --> 18:48.787
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's probably why.

18:48.867 --> 18:53.169
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that's one of the things I've seen in both the military and training afterwards is,

18:53.949 --> 19:07.085
[UNKNOWN]: People who have never shot are easier to teach because they don't have bad habits and all these You know crazy muscle memories that are hard to unwind What was the date that you actually showed up at the New York Field Office?

19:07.145 --> 19:10.570
[UNKNOWN]: My EOD date was February 28th, 2000.

19:10.590 --> 19:10.970
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, so

19:14.013 --> 19:28.084
[UNKNOWN]: between then and 9.11, obviously the mentality of the entire country was significantly different than it changed forever, but prior to 9.11 what did that year and a half look like.

19:29.238 --> 19:37.200
[UNKNOWN]: Well, we had about seven months of the training, training academy, and that's split for Sieger's service, that's split into two academies.

19:37.840 --> 19:46.762
[UNKNOWN]: Everyone, all federal law enforcement that are training to be criminal investigators go to the federal law enforcement training center, down in Georgia, Fletzzy.

19:47.202 --> 19:50.383
[UNKNOWN]: Except for FBI, FBI has their own corner code, you know, own corner code thing.

19:50.723 --> 19:54.544
[UNKNOWN]: So you go there for, I think he's about three and a half months or so, excuse me.

19:55.444 --> 19:59.770
[UNKNOWN]: and learn in basics, this is what it means to investigate crimes at the federal level.

20:00.150 --> 20:13.927
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, doing a lot of shooting, a lot of tactical driving and stuff, you're getting your first taste of, you know, combat tactics, I guess, hand-to-hand type of things, which is all a lot of fun, and then just a ton of law, right, and that's where I was.

20:14.568 --> 20:15.650
[UNKNOWN]: kind of lost that time.

20:15.790 --> 20:16.811
[UNKNOWN]: So what do you mean?

20:16.851 --> 20:19.816
[UNKNOWN]: What probable cause, reasonable suspicion, and what's the difference?

20:19.836 --> 20:20.897
[UNKNOWN]: Well, there's a big difference.

20:20.917 --> 20:21.679
[UNKNOWN]: You're more on, you know?

20:22.079 --> 20:26.145
[UNKNOWN]: So, so, so learning all that, just learning the basics.

20:26.165 --> 20:27.968
[UNKNOWN]: And we had some really good instructors.

20:27.988 --> 20:28.909
[UNKNOWN]: We had to do that was just,

20:29.610 --> 20:42.179
[UNKNOWN]: He was so serious and took the PT really serious, but I learned quickly that at least at that stage, they're not trying to flunk you, they're not trying to wash you out, they're trying to build you because they've invested time and money and you already, right?

20:43.260 --> 20:53.787
[UNKNOWN]: But then you graduate that and you go to our Secret Service Specific Training Center up in Maryland and everything gets ratcheted up a few notches.

20:54.208 --> 20:56.549
[UNKNOWN]: Now you're learning on the investigative side.

20:57.562 --> 21:02.866
[UNKNOWN]: You've covered a lot of surveillance and interview techniques and on-cost stuff and law.

21:02.886 --> 21:03.667
[UNKNOWN]: You've covered all of that.

21:03.947 --> 21:09.211
[UNKNOWN]: But now you're really getting into the here's the specific cases and crimes that we investigate.

21:09.792 --> 21:10.552
[UNKNOWN]: Here's how you do that.

21:10.592 --> 21:13.234
[UNKNOWN]: Here's the angle that you come at this case in that case.

21:14.195 --> 21:25.731
[UNKNOWN]: But a bulk, a majority of your work there was going to be, you know, protection related, and that's where you're like, at least, for me, I felt like, okay, I'm a level ground now because this is brand new to almost everyone.

21:26.411 --> 21:30.116
[UNKNOWN]: I got, you know, I'm no longer at a disadvantage, like everyone's learning this for the first time.

21:30.677 --> 21:45.966
[UNKNOWN]: In your learning, you know, tactics and formations and more firearms and even more combatants, things like that, which are so much fun in the driving, you know, driving those armored vehicles at high rates of speed and the turn, I mean, all those kinds of things.

21:46.326 --> 21:52.930
[UNKNOWN]: So that's, that's where, and there they don't, I'll just say this, they don't mind fucking out, much of there, because you can't do that.

21:53.931 --> 21:54.692
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, what good are you?

21:54.772 --> 21:55.433
[UNKNOWN]: What are you going to be?

21:55.894 --> 21:56.354
[UNKNOWN]: You know, yeah.

21:56.555 --> 22:00.039
[UNKNOWN]: And so, and I think, if I remember correctly, we had one guy who just wasn't.

22:00.841 --> 22:03.424
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you had the Fletzzy standard for a firearm, for example.

22:03.684 --> 22:04.706
[UNKNOWN]: You got to call this or that.

22:04.726 --> 22:06.028
[UNKNOWN]: I can't remember what the numbers are.

22:06.588 --> 22:07.430
[UNKNOWN]: And he was doing that, but...

22:08.589 --> 22:10.791
[UNKNOWN]: That got dialed in with a secret service.

22:10.811 --> 22:12.052
[UNKNOWN]: You're going to be shooting in crowd.

22:12.072 --> 22:15.795
[UNKNOWN]: You're going to be shooting with non-combatants all around you, civilians all around you.

22:16.836 --> 22:18.297
[UNKNOWN]: You got to bring that group in, even tighter.

22:19.198 --> 22:21.620
[UNKNOWN]: And for example, he wasn't able to do that consistently.

22:21.640 --> 22:22.661
[UNKNOWN]: And he was gone.

22:22.721 --> 22:22.941
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

22:23.641 --> 22:35.031
[UNKNOWN]: Firearms, why is there any like super obscure if you can share actual weapons that you guys carry on the job that would surprise people that are kind of unexpected.

22:36.314 --> 22:37.775
[UNKNOWN]: Not really, I mean, it's pretty standard.

22:37.855 --> 22:45.120
[UNKNOWN]: Unfortunately, I missed the oozey era, you know, the You guys rock M. P.5 I missed the oozey era.

22:45.160 --> 22:47.641
[UNKNOWN]: There was still some old timers when I came on and had a qualifier.

22:47.661 --> 22:49.082
[UNKNOWN]: So hey, can I shoot that just one time?

22:49.783 --> 22:50.543
[UNKNOWN]: Really inaccurate.

22:50.563 --> 22:51.644
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, ridiculous.

22:51.904 --> 22:59.088
[UNKNOWN]: But I mean, we're carrying at the time sig two to nine's, you know, three-five-seven Which was a which was a hot round and I really enjoy that weapon.

22:59.128 --> 22:59.629
[UNKNOWN]: Oh my goodness.

23:00.069 --> 23:00.409
[UNKNOWN]: What about

23:02.110 --> 23:06.594
[UNKNOWN]: I guess under coats long gone wise, you guys rocking any MP5s or anything like that.

23:06.634 --> 23:10.977
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, at that time, MP5, H&K, MP5 is not a millimeter of submachine guns.

23:11.798 --> 23:13.099
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, nothing too impressive.

23:13.119 --> 23:15.541
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you shoot that thing and it's like, did it go off?

23:15.801 --> 23:17.682
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I mean, not much recoil at all.

23:18.563 --> 23:22.466
[UNKNOWN]: But for like close quarters kind of things, it was very, very functional weapon.

23:22.846 --> 23:28.251
[UNKNOWN]: We also used, you know, police magnum, you know, Remington 870, 12th gauge of which was.

23:28.971 --> 23:52.486
[UNKNOWN]: you know any time you're blasting the shotgun it's a good day oh yeah and then later later in my career the MP5 would be phased out and we would go more to to long rifles you know some variants of of the info and so forth right yeah um do you know did they ever I guess traverse into the 300 blackout type type rounds are the 6-5's or anything a little bit more stopping power oriented than 5-5-6

23:53.487 --> 24:16.795
[UNKNOWN]: yet not not with your everyday line agents and your special two groups uh... the counter sniper guys uh... counter assault team guys uh... your team remont emergency response team there at the White House they got into more more elaborate uh... you know maybe you and i would call higher-end weapons higher caliber be able to reach out more of course but not but not for the everyday guys

24:18.537 --> 24:26.595
[UNKNOWN]: From the time that you graduated, the Secret Service Academy, and I guess between then and 9-11, how big of a window was that?

24:27.268 --> 24:35.612
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I walked in in New York City, small town, kid in the big city, in August of 2000.

24:36.252 --> 24:43.336
[UNKNOWN]: So that gives me 13 months, 13 months before the world stopped turning.

24:44.276 --> 24:49.699
[UNKNOWN]: And so that was just, I mean, it was just, it was like the Wild Wild West of Secret Service offices.

24:49.719 --> 24:51.780
[UNKNOWN]: It was a lot of fun.

24:51.800 --> 24:54.281
[UNKNOWN]: What made it the Wild West, the lack of super-ridden?

24:57.910 --> 25:22.917
[UNKNOWN]: there was this weird transition period throughout the entire service where just they were hiring a ton of people i think that's why i got i made the cut and they were because a lot of guys were retired and so it just went through this weird transition where there was just a cross the agency it was young younger a lot younger guys and a lot of the old guys were just punching out uh... but in our office in your office

25:23.775 --> 25:26.400
[UNKNOWN]: It was even more so on steroids.

25:26.420 --> 25:27.622
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, when we were in training, Mike,

25:28.737 --> 25:30.858
[UNKNOWN]: And they say, hey, this is the way you do this and do that and do that.

25:31.358 --> 25:33.159
[UNKNOWN]: And then they be like, hey, who's going to New York?

25:33.520 --> 25:34.940
[UNKNOWN]: And four of us would raise our hand.

25:34.960 --> 25:37.582
[UNKNOWN]: And they're like, yeah, they'll show you how they do it there.

25:37.602 --> 25:38.342
[UNKNOWN]: They do it different there.

25:38.462 --> 25:40.744
[UNKNOWN]: And I was just like, this is a joke, right?

25:41.184 --> 25:43.725
[UNKNOWN]: You know, this is a joke.

25:44.326 --> 25:46.827
[UNKNOWN]: But no one I got there, no, it was a different world.

25:47.347 --> 25:49.709
[UNKNOWN]: And we were just so, so young.

25:49.929 --> 25:53.631
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, we measured seniority by months, not by day.

25:53.671 --> 25:53.951
[UNKNOWN]: So.

25:54.211 --> 25:57.935
[UNKNOWN]: Like, oh, you're senior to me and by senior to me, you're four months, you were here four months before me.

25:58.676 --> 26:04.502
[UNKNOWN]: And we just had very, very few non-supervisory agents kind of what we call phase three.

26:04.843 --> 26:05.964
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of like being an NCO.

26:06.665 --> 26:12.852
[UNKNOWN]: You know, can you imagine being an 1819-year-old, whether you're in a Marine unit or a seal or whatever?

26:13.592 --> 26:19.056
[UNKNOWN]: And you're you're you're you're trying to pull off your mission without without without that Starr sergeant, sergeant, sergeant, whatever.

26:19.196 --> 26:19.956
[UNKNOWN]: No one knows he owes.

26:20.237 --> 26:20.937
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I'd be nuts.

26:21.097 --> 26:36.827
[UNKNOWN]: It's a recipe for disaster and Luckily we we avoided disaster, but we got into some tight spots and some funny spots as well that we're just You know what what is the dumbest thing you did as a brand new age?

26:36.887 --> 26:37.528
[UNKNOWN]: My gosh

26:39.026 --> 26:43.967
[UNKNOWN]: So this is too long, man.

26:44.067 --> 26:48.828
[UNKNOWN]: Here's a legend that happened allegedly before I got there, right before I got there.

26:49.568 --> 26:52.809
[UNKNOWN]: This is the squad that I would go into in a month or so.

26:53.389 --> 26:55.510
[UNKNOWN]: And the legend is that they did the search warrant.

26:55.910 --> 26:57.670
[UNKNOWN]: They're on this apartment floor bang.

26:57.690 --> 26:58.550
[UNKNOWN]: They bang down the door.

26:58.830 --> 27:01.611
[UNKNOWN]: They realize within seconds that they hit the wrong door.

27:02.397 --> 27:05.321
[UNKNOWN]: And this is old lady in there and she's screaming like she's mad at him, you know.

27:06.323 --> 27:12.752
[UNKNOWN]: And the senior guy who's in charge of this team who's like, he's only been there two years, you know?

27:12.993 --> 27:15.837
[UNKNOWN]: The legend is he's like, man, we'll be back in about an hour.

27:15.857 --> 27:16.678
[UNKNOWN]: We're going to go down the hall.

27:17.354 --> 27:17.914
[UNKNOWN]: and hit this door.

27:18.555 --> 27:25.397
[UNKNOWN]: We'll be back in an hour to fix your door, we're gonna fix your door, but on behalf of the federal Bureau of Investigation, I sincerely apologize.

27:25.977 --> 27:29.959
[UNKNOWN]: Meaning, we just screwed up, and we're gonna blame somebody else for it, right?

27:30.179 --> 27:32.620
[UNKNOWN]: So that's like the legend that I'm walking into.

27:32.640 --> 27:36.522
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean, my friend and I, we went into a neighborhood one time.

27:37.482 --> 27:41.805
[UNKNOWN]: We're knocking on door, we're up in the Bronx, we're knocking on doors, and we're getting nowhere.

27:42.045 --> 27:46.448
[UNKNOWN]: We decided at the end of the day that they go down to the local precinct, talking to the des Sargent.

27:46.468 --> 27:51.532
[UNKNOWN]: So, hey, we're looking for so-and-so, you know, Johnny Jones, we hear he's in this area.

27:51.972 --> 27:54.974
[UNKNOWN]: We've been knocking on doors, and he's like, where were you?

27:54.994 --> 27:58.537
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, oh, this apartment, and he's like, oh, he's like, oh, he's like, oh, he's

27:59.687 --> 28:01.108
[UNKNOWN]: He starts just cursing, right?

28:01.509 --> 28:02.609
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, you guys are more honest.

28:03.150 --> 28:05.972
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, we don't go on that block without like four units.

28:06.553 --> 28:11.177
[UNKNOWN]: Like, what do you, and we just, you know, we just, we just didn't know, I mean, just didn't know.

28:11.217 --> 28:18.302
[UNKNOWN]: And I had one story, I'm just, like I said, I'm gonna be the butt of most of my stories, right?

28:19.339 --> 28:23.742
[UNKNOWN]: myself and I were, myself and another agent were doing what we call counter surveillance.

28:24.563 --> 28:33.409
[UNKNOWN]: And we had this big event coming up and we were out there at this one particular site that we knew our protectees were going to be out a few days ahead of time.

28:33.429 --> 28:35.331
[UNKNOWN]: And we were looking for, we were in plain clothes and stuff.

28:35.351 --> 28:46.219
[UNKNOWN]: We were looking for what we call pre-operational activity, someone who's kind of setting up or trying to figure out, you know, walking off time in distance, taking pictures, I kind of think.

28:47.058 --> 28:47.860
[UNKNOWN]: And we see these two guys.

28:48.601 --> 28:55.133
[UNKNOWN]: Now we just gotten maybe a few days earlier, some briefing on some threat that was, some Iranian threat that was coming out.

28:55.213 --> 28:57.177
[UNKNOWN]: And this is gosh, this is 20 plus years ago.

28:58.842 --> 29:02.323
[UNKNOWN]: And so we got that on our mind, this irony, and so I don't know.

29:02.503 --> 29:05.004
[UNKNOWN]: Didn't really relate to what we were doing, but that's on our mind.

29:05.444 --> 29:10.286
[UNKNOWN]: We see these two guys, we start following them, and they're acting in Hinkie, they're acting weird, Hinkie, that's an official term.

29:11.026 --> 29:18.108
[UNKNOWN]: And we're like, they're showing a signs of pre-operational activity, like these guys are, and they're ironian.

29:18.828 --> 29:21.709
[UNKNOWN]: Like in my mind, they're ironian, because they look ironian.

29:22.409 --> 29:24.530
[UNKNOWN]: I'm 27 years old, like what do I know about?

29:25.190 --> 29:26.871
[UNKNOWN]: Anyways, a long story short,

29:28.025 --> 29:31.268
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, we can't, in my PD won't come talk to him.

29:31.288 --> 29:40.917
[UNKNOWN]: We're trying to stay kind of in role trying to see the two of us, and he's got two months on more than me, we just say, screw it, we're going to come out of role, we can front these guys.

29:41.197 --> 29:41.938
[UNKNOWN]: So I question them.

29:43.913 --> 29:56.901
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, we find out within minutes that these guys are not an Iranians, they're two Mexican nationals, dark skin, big moustaches, I mean, and I'm just like, what are we gonna, what are we gonna do?

29:57.141 --> 30:01.864
[UNKNOWN]: We're trying to ascertain their legal status, INS will not even call us back, back then it was INS, right?

30:02.004 --> 30:04.726
[UNKNOWN]: They won't even call us back, they're got, you guys are more on it.

30:04.746 --> 30:07.267
[UNKNOWN]: Finally, I call my boss, I'm going to say, hey,

30:09.789 --> 30:21.722
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we got this situation, we got these, we haven't arrested them, but they're kind of detained when I tell them, the situation's like, yeah, well you should, you know, you should have called me about this an hour ago before you moved, I was like, yes, sir, I got it.

30:22.643 --> 30:27.748
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, you know what, DK, some decisions need to be made on the street.

30:30.719 --> 30:34.042
[UNKNOWN]: He's like you copy was like copy, you know, I'm just embarrassed.

30:34.642 --> 30:36.704
[UNKNOWN]: So I don't know, he's telling me, hey, this is your mess.

30:37.505 --> 30:38.325
[UNKNOWN]: Do something with a kid.

30:39.486 --> 30:41.628
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, so we did something.

30:42.509 --> 30:51.656
[UNKNOWN]: We, I gave him back the docs, you know, and said on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we sincerely apologize.

30:53.140 --> 30:55.721
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, kind of sent them sent them on their way.

30:56.081 --> 31:02.004
[UNKNOWN]: And if you were running any FBI guys that have called you on doing that, they do the same thing.

31:02.104 --> 31:03.285
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah.

31:03.305 --> 31:04.785
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

31:04.825 --> 31:05.706
[UNKNOWN]: They do the same thing.

31:05.946 --> 31:07.426
[UNKNOWN]: Somebody crazy caused their office.

31:07.827 --> 31:09.868
[UNKNOWN]: They'll say, yeah, this sounds like a secret service issue.

31:09.908 --> 31:10.508
[UNKNOWN]: She called them.

31:10.548 --> 31:12.949
[UNKNOWN]: And then, you know, we did the, we did the same.

31:12.989 --> 31:15.110
[UNKNOWN]: But, um, but you know, there was one.

31:16.683 --> 31:23.985
[UNKNOWN]: If I'm being honest, it was one, you know, operation that could have gone bad sideways, due to lack of an experience.

31:24.645 --> 31:31.527
[UNKNOWN]: Sleep is the one thing that affects everything else, training, focus, mood, how you show up for the people around you.

31:32.128 --> 31:39.370
[UNKNOWN]: I used to just accept waking up stiff and unrested like it was part of the deal, especially with everything my body has been through.

31:39.690 --> 31:43.031
[UNKNOWN]: He looks sent me one of their mattresses and the difference has been real.

31:43.271 --> 31:46.112
[UNKNOWN]: I'm waking up feeling like I actually recovered overnight.

31:46.612 --> 31:54.874
[UNKNOWN]: less tightness, better mornings when you're training jiu-jitsu consistently recovery is an optional, and better sleep is a massive part of that equation.

31:55.254 --> 31:59.635
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32:00.235 --> 32:09.457
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32:11.357 --> 32:21.361
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32:21.621 --> 32:27.183
[UNKNOWN]: They're the most awarded mattress brand out there, tested and reviewed by Forbes and Wired.

32:27.403 --> 32:32.184
[UNKNOWN]: Go to HelixSleep.com slash mic drop for up to 30% off.

32:32.364 --> 32:36.926
[UNKNOWN]: That's HelixSleep.com slash mic drop for up to 30% off.

32:37.226 --> 32:39.747
[UNKNOWN]: HelixSleep.com slash mic drop.

32:40.467 --> 32:42.829
[UNKNOWN]: There's this one guy we were, there was four of us, four agents.

32:43.349 --> 32:47.392
[UNKNOWN]: We had surveillance guy and pick up some kind of fraud case.

32:47.412 --> 32:50.294
[UNKNOWN]: He was picking up all this fraudulent, fraudulent, purged merchandise.

32:50.874 --> 32:53.857
[UNKNOWN]: And he was then taken it to a storage unit somewhere.

32:54.497 --> 32:56.058
[UNKNOWN]: And we had done this two times before.

32:56.358 --> 32:56.959
[UNKNOWN]: We had followed him.

32:57.379 --> 33:00.641
[UNKNOWN]: He always showed up in this crappy little car alone.

33:01.422 --> 33:07.066
[UNKNOWN]: And so by the third time the US attorney, assistant US attorney's like, OK, arrest him this time.

33:07.246 --> 33:07.446
[UNKNOWN]: Got it.

33:08.367 --> 33:09.228
[UNKNOWN]: This time shows up.

33:10.453 --> 33:11.854
[UNKNOWN]: bigger car for dudes.

33:13.355 --> 33:14.895
[UNKNOWN]: So there's four guys and there's only four agents.

33:16.456 --> 33:17.317
[UNKNOWN]: That's not a ratio.

33:17.777 --> 33:18.738
[UNKNOWN]: That's not the ratio we want.

33:18.838 --> 33:20.118
[UNKNOWN]: First street, first street, take down.

33:20.278 --> 33:22.980
[UNKNOWN]: And we had no NYPDs or no uniform support.

33:23.780 --> 33:28.043
[UNKNOWN]: So a wise and prudent age and experience agent is like, okay, reset.

33:28.463 --> 33:29.363
[UNKNOWN]: Let's do the surveillance.

33:29.383 --> 33:30.184
[UNKNOWN]: Let's follow them again.

33:30.224 --> 33:32.425
[UNKNOWN]: See if something but we don't have to do the grab right now.

33:32.545 --> 33:34.666
[UNKNOWN]: There's nothing that says we have to do the grab right now, you know?

33:35.287 --> 33:36.387
[UNKNOWN]: But for

33:37.913 --> 33:47.738
[UNKNOWN]: full of piss and vinegar and aggression and we're like, yeah, we're going to take him down and we do the take down and of course the Ford just got her in four different directions and I got four agents in four different directions.

33:47.758 --> 33:48.279
[UNKNOWN]: It's bad news.

33:49.099 --> 33:49.800
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm chasing this dude.

33:49.820 --> 33:50.280
[UNKNOWN]: We're in Queens.

33:50.300 --> 33:59.405
[UNKNOWN]: I'm chasing him down the street and he flies around the corner and luckily I remembered an incident in training where a guy had flown around the corner and just got lit up right.

33:59.425 --> 34:00.746
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, no, don't take this corner slow.

34:01.625 --> 34:05.926
[UNKNOWN]: take a slow, so that I had like a training flashback, which is perfect, is what I needed.

34:06.606 --> 34:09.487
[UNKNOWN]: And I kind of pie the corner and did it real slow.

34:09.947 --> 34:11.708
[UNKNOWN]: And by that time, the street is empty and he's gone.

34:11.728 --> 34:14.329
[UNKNOWN]: We're like in an industrial area, so it's not like a lot of people.

34:14.509 --> 34:14.969
[UNKNOWN]: He's gone.

34:15.789 --> 34:21.771
[UNKNOWN]: But I hear my friend yell, and I turn, and he's running down the other street chasing this dude.

34:22.131 --> 34:24.532
[UNKNOWN]: And my friend's not very fast.

34:24.592 --> 34:25.172
[UNKNOWN]: I'm fasting him.

34:25.392 --> 34:27.853
[UNKNOWN]: So I leave that guy, so I can't find him.

34:28.253 --> 34:29.093
[UNKNOWN]: I start chasing this guy.

34:29.753 --> 34:31.975
[UNKNOWN]: And I passed my friend and I'm getting close to this guy.

34:32.275 --> 34:34.336
[UNKNOWN]: I'm as close as maybe, maybe me to you right here.

34:34.976 --> 34:37.158
[UNKNOWN]: And he finally he realized that he's not out running me.

34:37.798 --> 34:39.119
[UNKNOWN]: And he stops, I'm going to get your hands up.

34:39.139 --> 34:41.100
[UNKNOWN]: But at this point, I have my weapon out, I'm deployed.

34:42.061 --> 34:44.082
[UNKNOWN]: And I see turn around.

34:44.142 --> 34:45.143
[UNKNOWN]: I should have just put him on a ground.

34:45.643 --> 34:46.764
[UNKNOWN]: Put him on a ground right away, right?

34:47.224 --> 34:48.445
[UNKNOWN]: Kind of get him in a neutral position.

34:48.965 --> 34:49.666
[UNKNOWN]: I said turn around.

34:50.226 --> 34:53.068
[UNKNOWN]: As he has got his hands up, he's being compliant.

34:53.328 --> 34:56.550
[UNKNOWN]: But as he turns, his right hand dips down.

35:00.182 --> 35:01.463
[UNKNOWN]: his right hand dips to his waistband.

35:01.883 --> 35:03.783
[UNKNOWN]: What am I thinking?

35:03.803 --> 35:04.484
[UNKNOWN]: He's pulling a gun.

35:04.504 --> 35:05.384
[UNKNOWN]: He's going to turn and shoot me.

35:05.924 --> 35:09.706
[UNKNOWN]: And Mike, I am screaming, and I'm halfway through my trigger pull.

35:09.826 --> 35:12.887
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that little sick 2-2-9, that first trigger pull was double action.

35:12.927 --> 35:13.647
[UNKNOWN]: That's the long one.

35:13.867 --> 35:15.228
[UNKNOWN]: Is about 10 and a half pounds, probably?

35:15.528 --> 35:16.768
[UNKNOWN]: I'm at least five pounds through it, right?

35:16.949 --> 35:19.109
[UNKNOWN]: I can see the hammer moving back.

35:19.229 --> 35:23.191
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm about to squeeze up, and he turns fully around in his hand is empty.

35:24.502 --> 35:28.364
[UNKNOWN]: And I let off the tricker and get him on the ground and cuff him and everything.

35:29.185 --> 35:35.309
[UNKNOWN]: And I was, you know, about five pounds of pressure from shooting an unknown man.

35:36.370 --> 35:40.672
[UNKNOWN]: And the point of that whole story is that takedown shouldn't ever happen.

35:41.513 --> 35:45.415
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's just the wise experience agent would have said, you know what?

35:46.196 --> 35:47.577
[UNKNOWN]: Nothing says we have to do this today.

35:48.663 --> 35:49.323
[UNKNOWN]: No one's being hurt.

35:49.443 --> 35:51.544
[UNKNOWN]: There isn't a child getting hurt or something like that.

35:52.005 --> 35:54.526
[UNKNOWN]: No one's getting this is a financial crime.

35:55.226 --> 36:01.589
[UNKNOWN]: But I was that close to taking, that wrecks my career that I have to live with that.

36:01.609 --> 36:07.733
[UNKNOWN]: And then of course, the family, if he's wounded or if he dies, I mean, ramifications go on forever.

36:08.013 --> 36:09.633
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, that would have ended your career.

36:10.374 --> 36:11.875
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, I think so, 100%.

36:13.557 --> 36:17.822
[UNKNOWN]: Checking into the New York field office for the Secret Service a year before 9-11.

36:18.303 --> 36:24.730
[UNKNOWN]: What was the focus like showing up what was the task you were given to what was to what to focus on?

36:25.872 --> 36:28.475
[UNKNOWN]: Running and gunning investigatively, but...

36:30.337 --> 36:36.603
[UNKNOWN]: The Clintons who were in office had just moved to New York, a Westchester, about an hour north of the city.

36:37.263 --> 36:42.428
[UNKNOWN]: And so they're dealing with now we have a protect because she was going to run for U.S. Senate in New York.

36:42.728 --> 36:45.611
[UNKNOWN]: We got to live in New York to be a senator from New York.

36:46.031 --> 36:47.292
[UNKNOWN]: So they had just bought a house.

36:48.080 --> 36:51.342
[UNKNOWN]: And so the office was scrambling with that.

36:51.442 --> 36:54.984
[UNKNOWN]: And so I air dropped right into the middle of the 2000.

36:55.304 --> 36:56.965
[UNKNOWN]: I'm in there in August of 2000.

36:57.025 --> 37:05.990
[UNKNOWN]: And November of 2000 is that election, where she gets first lady at the time, Clinton, gets elected U.S.

37:06.010 --> 37:06.810
[UNKNOWN]: Senator from New York.

37:07.150 --> 37:08.551
[UNKNOWN]: I air dropped right into that campaign.

37:08.991 --> 37:09.512
[UNKNOWN]: And so for me,

37:11.236 --> 37:11.656
[UNKNOWN]: I showed up.

37:12.036 --> 37:14.117
[UNKNOWN]: They said we're going to give you this weekend off.

37:14.137 --> 37:14.497
[UNKNOWN]: Don't worry.

37:14.677 --> 37:27.101
[UNKNOWN]: Get acclimated with your family and stuff, and then next week, shoot, Friday rolled around and they're like, calling me, yeah, your first protection assignment is, is Clint and Clintons are coming up to their house.

37:27.921 --> 37:31.983
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, no sir, you've made a mistake, they told us we'd have the day off.

37:32.003 --> 37:32.383
[UNKNOWN]: And they're like,

37:33.223 --> 37:55.274
[UNKNOWN]: are you kidding me kid like you know dropping off bomber something to hang up on me and so I don't think I did I don't think I touched a criminal investigation until November until that election was over because I was just air dropped right into it was uh doing a protection detail in real life compared to how you learned it in training vastly different or did the training prepare you pretty well for

37:56.542 --> 38:02.537
[UNKNOWN]: they prepare you pretty well as as as good as you as good as you can expect, but

38:04.102 --> 38:14.306
[UNKNOWN]: But when you're in a place like New York City, I mean, you're holding up pedestrian traffic on a sidewalk and the New Yorker looks at you and says, who the after you get out of my way?

38:14.326 --> 38:17.428
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, no, seriously, you're just a dude in the suit, right?

38:17.828 --> 38:29.773
[UNKNOWN]: They may not even realize it, so that doing those operations in that city, especially in a political campaign, where you're not going to like a fundraiser lunch

38:30.475 --> 38:31.676
[UNKNOWN]: and then you're done for the day.

38:32.236 --> 38:34.557
[UNKNOWN]: Like they're hitting four or five events, right?

38:34.577 --> 38:42.261
[UNKNOWN]: Two events in Manhattan, then we're going to go out to Coney Island and Brooklyn, and we're going to shake hands, and you're doing five or six campaign events a day.

38:42.901 --> 38:43.782
[UNKNOWN]: You learn really quick.

38:44.422 --> 38:46.123
[UNKNOWN]: You learn, you get in those reps really quick.

38:46.323 --> 38:48.724
[UNKNOWN]: And you learn, just like you learned in the teams, I'm sure.

38:49.204 --> 38:53.366
[UNKNOWN]: You learn what some of the stuff in training is not applicable to the real world.

38:53.766 --> 38:57.388
[UNKNOWN]: And you learn, at least you got some other tools in your chest to get the job done.

38:59.490 --> 39:06.097
[UNKNOWN]: New York City, 9-11 Secret Service Agent, walk us through what happened.

39:08.720 --> 39:14.847
[UNKNOWN]: Man, a really long, bad day at work.

39:16.128 --> 39:16.809
[UNKNOWN]: How did it start?

39:16.909 --> 39:17.229
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

39:19.398 --> 39:20.218
[UNKNOWN]: I was junior, right?

39:20.258 --> 39:24.540
[UNKNOWN]: So we were all the junior guys were in the gym, early, you got to be there earlier in everybody else.

39:25.160 --> 39:35.604
[UNKNOWN]: So we had just finished working out, I was in the locker room, bunch of us in the locker room, putting on a clean suit for the day, oh, eight, forty, six happens.

39:36.544 --> 39:41.966
[UNKNOWN]: And I never forgot, I was just, you know, measuring up my tie and I never, I never tied the knot.

39:42.886 --> 39:47.049
[UNKNOWN]: There was a rumble, you know, it's kind of a shake because we were in seven-year-old trade center.

39:47.069 --> 39:48.089
[UNKNOWN]: That's where our field office was.

39:49.150 --> 39:51.991
[UNKNOWN]: We were on the 9th and 10th floor, I believe, of seven-year-old trade.

39:52.631 --> 39:55.393
[UNKNOWN]: And that's that just across the street on the north of the North Tower.

39:55.573 --> 39:59.855
[UNKNOWN]: And that first plane came in and hit the north side of the North Tower, right?

40:00.735 --> 40:01.576
[UNKNOWN]: And so we felt it.

40:03.031 --> 40:05.572
[UNKNOWN]: They know what it was, but I don't know.

40:05.652 --> 40:09.032
[UNKNOWN]: Just kept going on, and then about a minute or so, two later, it was pretty quick.

40:09.052 --> 40:10.013
[UNKNOWN]: We're being told to evacuate.

40:10.853 --> 40:12.493
[UNKNOWN]: This is not drill, you know, evacuate.

40:12.533 --> 40:15.754
[UNKNOWN]: This is by our own little command center there in our office.

40:17.034 --> 40:19.195
[UNKNOWN]: And I ran up one flight of steps to my desk.

40:19.235 --> 40:22.836
[UNKNOWN]: I grabbed every piece of gear that I would not need that day.

40:23.256 --> 40:28.377
[UNKNOWN]: And I left every piece of gear at my desk, like my radio, my pager,

40:28.943 --> 40:45.272
[UNKNOWN]: my flash light everything I would need later I left it all there because I was just so young and dumb in a hurry and yeah we dumped out onto the street and uh... right on a vessie street and i'm looking right across the street this two-lane street at the north side of the north tower man and everything's on fire and i didn't know what that was

40:46.592 --> 40:52.836
[UNKNOWN]: But I know of training, instinct, whatever, student of history, I know that went an accident.

40:53.316 --> 40:54.197
[UNKNOWN]: Even the first plane.

40:54.417 --> 40:55.037
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah.

40:55.377 --> 41:03.362
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't, I didn't, I spent most of the day not with a full appreciation of the magnitude of the attack, 767s, I think.

41:03.883 --> 41:10.086
[UNKNOWN]: But, I mean, I knew that radical Islamic terrorists had tried to take down the building in 1993 with the truck mom.

41:10.527 --> 41:13.749
[UNKNOWN]: I knew in court documents, they promised their brothers who tried to do it again.

41:14.709 --> 41:16.850
[UNKNOWN]: and that's just where my mind went first.

41:17.730 --> 41:21.191
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't know what it was but I knew it's time to what I call answer the bill.

41:21.991 --> 41:22.171
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

41:22.952 --> 41:37.316
[UNKNOWN]: So you're on the street looking up at the first plane after it hit the tower and tire things and gulfed in flames from a coordination standpoint and kind of what you guys were trying to accomplish was it just total chaos or was there at least some

41:40.415 --> 41:46.520
[UNKNOWN]: I, if I'm being honest, there wasn't, from my perspective, the groups I was running around with, there wasn't much of a, of a plan.

41:47.441 --> 41:49.763
[UNKNOWN]: Our comms were, were just shot.

41:50.323 --> 41:52.305
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, some of us had cell phones at the point.

41:52.425 --> 41:53.346
[UNKNOWN]: I had a cell phone.

41:53.686 --> 41:54.226
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't bring it.

41:54.266 --> 41:55.748
[UNKNOWN]: I did bring my pager, but it wasn't.

41:56.408 --> 41:58.849
[UNKNOWN]: wasn't getting anything, I mean, pager's, right?

41:58.909 --> 42:06.012
[UNKNOWN]: You and I think of pager's kids today, they only know what we're talking about, but we just collectively, this is probably about 30 of us.

42:06.573 --> 42:13.556
[UNKNOWN]: We had these big first eight kids, we call them fat kids, not fat kids, uh, the first eight trauma kids, right?

42:14.456 --> 42:17.618
[UNKNOWN]: We had those for the job, those just for protection assignments, we had them on every detail.

42:18.944 --> 42:19.865
[UNKNOWN]: Somebody was like, what in me?

42:19.885 --> 42:24.290
[UNKNOWN]: Somebody was like, let's go upstairs and grab the packets and start doing some work.

42:25.011 --> 42:28.054
[UNKNOWN]: So a bunch of guys went up, come back out on the street.

42:28.294 --> 42:29.636
[UNKNOWN]: Now we've got these big first-aid kits.

42:29.936 --> 42:33.140
[UNKNOWN]: We look half a block away at the West Side Highway.

42:33.540 --> 42:37.364
[UNKNOWN]: It seems like a lot of ambulances are there, marshalling and treating people.

42:38.145 --> 42:39.306
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, okay, let's just do that.

42:40.647 --> 42:42.989
[UNKNOWN]: I like to say, I mean, this was not our mission, right?

42:43.030 --> 42:52.038
[UNKNOWN]: This was not, this had really didn't have anything to do with us professionally, but as a group collectively, we went from special agent to first responder, like in a moment's notice.

42:52.498 --> 42:53.419
[UNKNOWN]: That's just what we started doing.

42:54.712 --> 43:03.214
[UNKNOWN]: And I guess from when you started doing that until the second tower was hit, were you just trying to administer aid?

43:03.234 --> 43:06.155
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, were you able to even find anyone that needed it?

43:06.175 --> 43:06.495
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

43:06.535 --> 43:09.896
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's about 17 minutes in between the two impacts.

43:10.096 --> 43:11.977
[UNKNOWN]: If I have my fax correct.

43:12.417 --> 43:13.417
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I had found this woman.

43:14.017 --> 43:15.738
[UNKNOWN]: She was a black female.

43:16.698 --> 43:26.108
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, her, my, her arm was, I don't know if you have any experience with this, but, uh, with, with, with, with burns, you know, her arm was just, I, I, several layers of skin gone.

43:26.148 --> 43:26.268
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

43:26.769 --> 43:30.493
[UNKNOWN]: There was, it looked, it appeared to be like skin dripping off of her fingertips, you know?

43:31.314 --> 43:32.094
[UNKNOWN]: And she was in shock.

43:32.154 --> 43:34.677
[UNKNOWN]: And she was looking at me and she was like, it, it's not that bad.

43:34.837 --> 43:35.378
[UNKNOWN]: It doesn't hurt.

43:35.538 --> 43:38.201
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, yeah, this, it's hurt to me more than you right now.

43:38.221 --> 43:38.861
[UNKNOWN]: You're in shock.

43:39.662 --> 43:46.769
[UNKNOWN]: And I think I guess I'm assuming Jeff fuel, you know, raining Jeff fuel that caught fire, had got her because she was on the street at the time, she didn't come out of the building.

43:47.825 --> 43:50.507
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, just first responder.

43:50.567 --> 43:53.450
[UNKNOWN]: OK, I've tried to think about this.

43:53.490 --> 43:56.932
[UNKNOWN]: And I've taken knee and I'm eargating her wound.

43:57.493 --> 43:59.514
[UNKNOWN]: I'm trying to get it prepped to wrap.

43:59.775 --> 44:03.297
[UNKNOWN]: And there's this NYPD, FD, and why I should say, paramedic behind me.

44:03.317 --> 44:05.059
[UNKNOWN]: And he's yelling at me, classic, New York form.

44:05.259 --> 44:06.420
[UNKNOWN]: Tell me what I'm doing wrong, right?

44:06.440 --> 44:07.981
[UNKNOWN]: So you're screwing this up, kid.

44:08.582 --> 44:09.162
[UNKNOWN]: I'm trying.

44:09.863 --> 44:11.224
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm just eargating her wound.

44:11.684 --> 44:14.987
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm just about to start wrapping the gauze

44:18.827 --> 44:21.869
[UNKNOWN]: massive explosion right over the top mid.

44:22.629 --> 44:27.432
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you know that that second plane came in lower and faster.

44:28.733 --> 44:29.634
[UNKNOWN]: Here's the crazy part.

44:30.194 --> 44:35.137
[UNKNOWN]: I am less than a football field distance from the base of tower two at that point.

44:36.598 --> 44:41.121
[UNKNOWN]: And that plane came in faster, came in lower, I never heard it or saw it.

44:42.502 --> 44:45.664
[UNKNOWN]: You know, you get tunnel vision and combat and long for whatever, you get tunnel vision

44:49.371 --> 44:50.612
[UNKNOWN]: Um, I never saw it or heard it.

44:51.252 --> 44:53.913
[UNKNOWN]: All I knew was there was a massive explosion over my head.

44:54.313 --> 44:56.834
[UNKNOWN]: And now the world was coming down on us.

44:56.874 --> 45:03.577
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it was just, you know, chunks of, you know, jet engines and debris and steel, raining jet fuel.

45:04.357 --> 45:06.838
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it was, I just remember shuttered.

45:06.858 --> 45:08.639
[UNKNOWN]: I could feel the heat on the back of my neck.

45:08.939 --> 45:09.719
[UNKNOWN]: It's how low it was.

45:10.520 --> 45:12.541
[UNKNOWN]: I remember shuttering, like, what just happened?

45:13.301 --> 45:15.422
[UNKNOWN]: And at that point, we all just scattered, like ants.

45:16.988 --> 45:23.532
[UNKNOWN]: How long were you kind of dissipating before you kind of regrouped and then what happened?

45:24.913 --> 45:25.233
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

45:26.956 --> 45:29.577
[UNKNOWN]: This is where my series of poor decisions kicks in.

45:31.337 --> 45:33.437
[UNKNOWN]: It pays to be young and dumb sometimes, I guess, man.

45:34.237 --> 45:36.998
[UNKNOWN]: Myself and two other agents, a guy named John and Tom.

45:37.998 --> 45:42.659
[UNKNOWN]: We were seeking shelter under like this metal portico, everything's falling around us.

45:43.319 --> 45:46.700
[UNKNOWN]: And Tom, Tom comes up with an idea.

45:47.380 --> 45:51.501
[UNKNOWN]: Now, Tom's a Marine, so when a Marine comes up with a good idea,

45:52.069 --> 45:57.890
[UNKNOWN]: I think I'd be a good idea, you know, you may want to think twice, depends on how many crayons easy you can go there.

46:00.030 --> 46:00.851
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.

46:00.931 --> 46:02.271
[UNKNOWN]: You know, you're going to get in trouble.

46:02.472 --> 46:03.452
[UNKNOWN]: It may be good trouble.

46:03.712 --> 46:12.438
[UNKNOWN]: You know, Tom says we need to go into, uh, we need to go in the trade center and help people get out in the first building in the first building.

46:12.498 --> 46:12.718
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

46:13.658 --> 46:15.420
[UNKNOWN]: And, okay, check.

46:15.620 --> 46:21.864
[UNKNOWN]: So Tom, John and I, zigzag, we frogger across the, the intersection there and we enter into there.

46:22.364 --> 46:24.145
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, quick, quick sign out on Tom.

46:25.752 --> 46:35.558
[UNKNOWN]: This guy would make it, he would later leave the secret service, get back in the Marine Corps, because he wanted to go down range and seek Retribution or something.

46:35.778 --> 46:37.399
[UNKNOWN]: And still to this day, he's the Marine Corps.

46:37.419 --> 46:38.139
[UNKNOWN]: He's a Brigadier in general.

46:38.339 --> 46:38.559
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

46:38.859 --> 46:40.020
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's cool.

46:40.140 --> 46:43.442
[UNKNOWN]: Anyways, so we go, he's an awesome awesome guy.

46:43.502 --> 46:46.764
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, a real patriot, I'm just just a stud of a human being.

46:47.404 --> 46:49.826
[UNKNOWN]: And we go in, here's the weird part.

46:50.266 --> 46:52.307
[UNKNOWN]: It's dark.

46:52.667 --> 46:53.748
[UNKNOWN]: It's still kind of you're ready to think about.

46:54.936 --> 46:57.587
[UNKNOWN]: We're sloshing around because there's about an inch of water on the ground.

46:58.722 --> 47:02.384
[UNKNOWN]: And I relate or figure out, like the sprinklers had been running for a good while now, right?

47:03.184 --> 47:05.825
[UNKNOWN]: And we're just walking around looking for people to help.

47:06.146 --> 47:08.166
[UNKNOWN]: And it seemed like we were running around for a long time.

47:08.927 --> 47:13.929
[UNKNOWN]: And then we saw this stairwell, and there's one stairwell, and there's people evacuating out of this stairwell.

47:14.569 --> 47:16.771
[UNKNOWN]: And we just decided, one of us said, I can't remember.

47:17.531 --> 47:19.292
[UNKNOWN]: Let's go up and see if people need help.

47:19.372 --> 47:21.653
[UNKNOWN]: And so we're in the North Tower, Tower 1.

47:22.273 --> 47:23.334
[UNKNOWN]: We enter into this stairwell.

47:24.154 --> 47:26.715
[UNKNOWN]: And there's a steady stream of people going down.

47:30.621 --> 47:43.844
[UNKNOWN]: um, about the first person in need that we encountered was on the 10th floor or so, um, large overweight woman kind of slumped over in the corner, like slumped over the corner, she's done.

47:43.924 --> 47:47.665
[UNKNOWN]: She can't, I don't know how many flights she's traversed, but she's done.

47:47.705 --> 47:48.926
[UNKNOWN]: She can't evacuate herself anymore.

47:49.846 --> 47:54.607
[UNKNOWN]: And no apparent injuries, um, the man, I just, as I say in my book,

47:56.185 --> 48:01.549
[UNKNOWN]: Unfortunately, for her, that that stairwell was full of civilians, not citizens, you know.

48:02.189 --> 48:07.113
[UNKNOWN]: A citizen would would see beyond themselves and would see this person in need.

48:07.353 --> 48:11.556
[UNKNOWN]: It just struck me, man, I don't know, I just, I just said, wow, this woman needs help.

48:11.596 --> 48:13.537
[UNKNOWN]: So, I told Tom and John to see y'all keep going.

48:13.918 --> 48:16.119
[UNKNOWN]: I'll meet you like at the next point of need, whatever that is.

48:16.519 --> 48:17.660
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm going to carry this woman down.

48:18.581 --> 48:21.383
[UNKNOWN]: And so, I talked to her really briefly, I pick her up.

48:22.987 --> 48:29.750
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not a big guy, you know, five, 10 with boots on, 170 pounds, probably at the time, and I started to care here now.

48:29.770 --> 48:30.890
[UNKNOWN]: I couldn't do it myself.

48:31.090 --> 48:33.771
[UNKNOWN]: I just randomly grabbed a dude by the collar and said, hey, you're helping me.

48:34.452 --> 48:35.552
[UNKNOWN]: And I get an instant.

48:35.572 --> 48:38.093
[UNKNOWN]: The blinders were off, he went from civilian to citizen, you know.

48:38.833 --> 48:39.974
[UNKNOWN]: And we cared her down.

48:40.554 --> 48:45.696
[UNKNOWN]: Luckily, at that time there's paramedics at the bottom, so I'm like, great, I just hand her off to professionals.

48:46.376 --> 48:52.539
[UNKNOWN]: And then I felt something at that time, I hadn't felt all day, I was scared.

48:54.268 --> 48:59.657
[UNKNOWN]: I think looking back, I think I'm scared because for the first time that day I was alone.

49:00.587 --> 49:10.351
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and so that would be my primary motivation for the next, let's say, 45 minutes to an hour was I need to link up with my guys.

49:10.971 --> 49:13.332
[UNKNOWN]: My Secret Service brothers and sisters, I didn't like being alone.

49:14.173 --> 49:20.916
[UNKNOWN]: And so I went back up, back up into the tower, looking for Tom, looking for John, looking for other people in need.

49:22.016 --> 49:25.317
[UNKNOWN]: Did you link back up with him or find anybody else?

49:25.577 --> 49:26.378
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I never, I never.

49:27.070 --> 49:29.471
[UNKNOWN]: They have their own wild and crazy story.

49:29.751 --> 49:31.692
[UNKNOWN]: I never was able to link up with them again.

49:32.452 --> 49:35.193
[UNKNOWN]: I think they were trapped in a partial collapse at one point.

49:36.274 --> 49:38.435
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, they have a story to tell this, it's pretty wild.

49:38.475 --> 49:45.057
[UNKNOWN]: But the people that I did encounter, let me tell you this, this 25 years later, this still hits me.

49:45.618 --> 49:48.539
[UNKNOWN]: Right, and then got, it's about the 30th floor or so.

49:50.798 --> 49:53.739
[UNKNOWN]: I, the door was open to the, to the hallway, I was like, why is that?

49:53.759 --> 49:58.981
[UNKNOWN]: And so I popped my head in there and the, the floor was full of New York City firefighters.

50:00.621 --> 50:03.122
[UNKNOWN]: And they were, they were beaten, bloodied, haggard.

50:04.243 --> 50:05.883
[UNKNOWN]: You could tell they had been in the fight already, right?

50:06.543 --> 50:09.044
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know if they got pulled back to refit, regroup, whatever.

50:10.025 --> 50:11.285
[UNKNOWN]: But I had a short conversation with them.

50:12.420 --> 50:16.201
[UNKNOWN]: And I asked him if they'd seen two secret surveys agents running around and couldn't locate him.

50:16.901 --> 50:18.402
[UNKNOWN]: And so at that point, I decided, you know what?

50:18.422 --> 50:19.882
[UNKNOWN]: They could be anywhere at Tom and John.

50:20.002 --> 50:20.742
[UNKNOWN]: I got no comms.

50:21.563 --> 50:22.283
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just going to leave.

50:22.323 --> 50:24.043
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to go back down 30 flights.

50:24.744 --> 50:26.924
[UNKNOWN]: Go outside the complex and link up with my people.

50:27.004 --> 50:27.865
[UNKNOWN]: I need to be with somebody.

50:28.645 --> 50:29.765
[UNKNOWN]: And man, I'll tell you what.

50:31.166 --> 50:32.826
[UNKNOWN]: As I'm walking through that threshold, that door.

50:34.046 --> 50:36.187
[UNKNOWN]: I hear their fire commander say, give a command.

50:36.267 --> 50:37.287
[UNKNOWN]: Something like this.

50:37.927 --> 50:38.648
[UNKNOWN]: Get your gear together.

50:38.688 --> 50:39.488
[UNKNOWN]: Boys were going back up.

50:44.405 --> 50:45.946
[UNKNOWN]: get your gear together, we're going back up.

50:46.046 --> 50:57.633
[UNKNOWN]: Man, I just, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I can only assume that they're part of the 343, New York City Firefighters should die that day.

50:57.933 --> 50:59.935
[UNKNOWN]: And the difference between them and me, let me be very clear.

51:00.195 --> 51:05.098
[UNKNOWN]: The difference between them and me and that scene is I didn't know the totality of the circumstances.

51:05.278 --> 51:09.160
[UNKNOWN]: I still don't even know that jet planes have been used in this attack.

51:09.561 --> 51:11.042
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't know, had I known all the facts?

51:12.036 --> 51:14.337
[UNKNOWN]: I might not have even been on the 30th floor, probably not.

51:15.498 --> 51:17.939
[UNKNOWN]: But they did, man, I mean, they didn't have all the facts, but they knew the scene.

51:18.659 --> 51:20.060
[UNKNOWN]: And they were going back up anyways, man.

51:20.660 --> 51:27.003
[UNKNOWN]: And so, for me, I always want to honor that, honor that part of the story.

51:27.603 --> 51:37.107
[UNKNOWN]: And I've decided to spend the rest of my days kind of using part of that story, using the story in general to honor that first responder community, especially that firefighter community means a lot to me.

51:38.107 --> 51:38.827
[UNKNOWN]: that's powerful.

51:40.328 --> 51:42.569
[UNKNOWN]: So you made it all the way back up to the 30th floor?

51:42.710 --> 51:55.176
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, where you just continuing to go up to look for your co-workers or did you help out anybody else get down and go back up like where you did on my way up.

51:55.196 --> 51:58.118
[UNKNOWN]: I did encounter another person very similar to the first lady.

51:58.918 --> 51:59.939
[UNKNOWN]: physically exhausted.

52:00.519 --> 52:04.922
[UNKNOWN]: I was able to kind of one man fireman carry kind of more assist not just carry.

52:05.763 --> 52:21.014
[UNKNOWN]: But after maybe 10 flights or so, she kind of got her second win and I handed her off to another you know citizen there and they share well and say, hey, make sure she gets down and then I went back up and that's where I encountered the guys on the 30th.

52:21.294 --> 52:23.075
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not exactly sure which floor but about 30.

52:24.005 --> 52:30.987
[UNKNOWN]: So at that point, you hear their commander give them the call of grab your stuff we're going back up, and that's going back up from the 30th.

52:31.207 --> 52:32.727
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that was my impression.

52:33.087 --> 52:35.988
[UNKNOWN]: And so for you at that point, what did you do?

52:37.529 --> 52:44.610
[UNKNOWN]: So I had decided that I'm going down because that's Sarah well, was largely empty now.

52:44.791 --> 52:45.711
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that one's Sarah well.

52:46.571 --> 52:47.871
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm like, what am I doing now?

52:47.911 --> 52:50.312
[UNKNOWN]: Well, let me just go back outside and find my guys.

52:51.148 --> 52:53.352
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I guess I'm curious.

52:53.412 --> 52:59.702
[UNKNOWN]: Did the prospect that the tower could or would collapse even enter your mind at that point?

53:00.544 --> 53:01.445
[UNKNOWN]: No, not at all.

53:01.565 --> 53:03.388
[UNKNOWN]: Here's I'll even confess something.

53:04.230 --> 53:05.492
[UNKNOWN]: I'm embarrassed a little shamed.

53:07.025 --> 53:15.853
[UNKNOWN]: While I'm making that 30 flight climb, I remember saying out loud to the people to calm them down as they were going down.

53:16.194 --> 53:19.857
[UNKNOWN]: I remember saying this out loud, don't worry folks, nothing can bring these things down.

53:22.399 --> 53:28.465
[UNKNOWN]: And that gives you a glimpse into the naive nature, the ignorant nature of the situation at the time from me.

53:28.565 --> 53:32.489
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I mean, to be fair, they were designed not for that not to happen.

53:32.689 --> 53:32.849
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

53:32.889 --> 53:33.310
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, so.

53:33.510 --> 53:33.870
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

53:35.031 --> 53:35.331
[UNKNOWN]: Man.

53:35.672 --> 53:36.232
[UNKNOWN]: All right.

53:36.252 --> 53:37.233
[UNKNOWN]: So you go back down.

53:37.253 --> 53:44.460
[UNKNOWN]: I assume you make it to the ground floor and then do you exit out of the building out under the street or what do you do next?

53:44.500 --> 53:46.923
[UNKNOWN]: Well, that would be the smart thing to do, but what I decided to do.

53:48.924 --> 53:50.126
[UNKNOWN]: I saw a bank of pay funds.

53:51.867 --> 53:52.808
[UNKNOWN]: I decided to call my wife.

53:54.100 --> 53:58.082
[UNKNOWN]: So I stopped and I call my wife from the lobby of World Trade One, from a payoff.

53:59.502 --> 54:01.743
[UNKNOWN]: And back then you could call collect, remember that?

54:03.044 --> 54:06.445
[UNKNOWN]: Today, you know, I talked to kids and they're just blown away what that even means.

54:07.005 --> 54:13.608
[UNKNOWN]: I called her collect man and she picked up and we had a very brief conversation.

54:13.748 --> 54:16.729
[UNKNOWN]: I said, look, I'm in the lobby of the Trade Center and I'm helping people get out.

54:18.523 --> 54:19.384
[UNKNOWN]: I will see you soon.

54:19.924 --> 54:20.305
[UNKNOWN]: I love you.

54:20.845 --> 54:21.986
[UNKNOWN]: And she's like, please be careful.

54:22.026 --> 54:23.547
[UNKNOWN]: Please be careful and hung up.

54:24.508 --> 54:26.589
[UNKNOWN]: And, um, man, I wish I'd never made that call.

54:28.070 --> 54:31.373
[UNKNOWN]: Because what she didn't know is, I hung up the phone.

54:31.813 --> 54:34.415
[UNKNOWN]: And I immediately went out the door, which is like 20 feet of my ride.

54:35.135 --> 54:36.617
[UNKNOWN]: Outside the complex to look for my guys.

54:36.637 --> 54:38.358
[UNKNOWN]: She didn't know that.

54:39.619 --> 54:43.461
[UNKNOWN]: All she knows is the last thing I had said was I'm in the lobby of the World Trade Center, helping people get out.

54:44.482 --> 54:45.403
[UNKNOWN]: And 13 minutes later.

54:47.180 --> 54:53.102
[UNKNOWN]: Um, and I know because we had like the phone record from the collect call 13 minutes later.

54:53.262 --> 54:59.784
[UNKNOWN]: She watches tower two collapse on TV, just lose her mind and I'm John and in her mind I'm gone.

54:59.944 --> 55:00.944
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

55:01.184 --> 55:08.146
[UNKNOWN]: You know and in that 13 minutes she called my parents her parents, you know, a good number of our friends and they all watch me, you know, quote unquote die.

55:08.627 --> 55:08.707
[UNKNOWN]: Oh.

55:09.127 --> 55:09.387
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

55:10.989 --> 55:15.992
[UNKNOWN]: So when Tower 2 collapsed, where were you at that time?

55:16.293 --> 55:18.254
[UNKNOWN]: I was near the base of Tower 2.

55:18.774 --> 55:19.695
[UNKNOWN]: I was looking for my guys.

55:20.295 --> 55:21.576
[UNKNOWN]: I'm talking to a police officer.

55:22.517 --> 55:24.598
[UNKNOWN]: I hear noise, a weird noise.

55:24.738 --> 55:27.020
[UNKNOWN]: I've only heard it twice in my life, and this was the first time.

55:27.520 --> 55:31.923
[UNKNOWN]: It's just a really high pitch metal on metal kind of screeching sound.

55:31.943 --> 55:34.565
[UNKNOWN]: Apparently that's what the sound steel makes before it breaks.

55:35.085 --> 55:37.647
[UNKNOWN]: You know, loses its fight with gravity and fire, I guess.

55:40.278 --> 55:44.861
[UNKNOWN]: I looked up and just as I looked up the top of tower two buckles and it comes down.

55:46.282 --> 55:52.426
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm embarrassed to say, my first thought, actually it's the first two words in my book, my first thought was I'm dead.

55:53.266 --> 55:58.710
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'm, I don't know, I'm guessing 70 to 80 yards from base that tower 110 floors coming down.

55:58.990 --> 55:59.490
[UNKNOWN]: It's game over.

55:59.831 --> 56:00.191
[UNKNOWN]: Lights out.

56:00.671 --> 56:00.971
[UNKNOWN]: D.K.

56:01.051 --> 56:01.352
[UNKNOWN]: It's done.

56:02.913 --> 56:07.796
[UNKNOWN]: And the second thought, which I know is now the spirit that lives within me was run.

56:11.360 --> 56:12.263
[UNKNOWN]: Mike, I was 27.

56:12.423 --> 56:12.965
[UNKNOWN]: I was fast.

56:13.005 --> 56:13.707
[UNKNOWN]: I used to be fast.

56:14.449 --> 56:15.231
[UNKNOWN]: That started running.

56:15.271 --> 56:17.838
[UNKNOWN]: I started sprinting, but there was

56:19.883 --> 56:22.364
[UNKNOWN]: There was no way I was going to run that monster, man.

56:22.524 --> 56:29.806
[UNKNOWN]: It was, I mean, each floor hitting the next was like a thunder clap, each one was louder, each one was closer, right?

56:30.286 --> 56:31.607
[UNKNOWN]: And then you hear that roar, right?

56:31.627 --> 56:37.189
[UNKNOWN]: That's just that of the whole thing, just that storm cloud kind of coming up on you.

56:37.809 --> 56:42.110
[UNKNOWN]: And right is that's happening large chunks of debris start falling around me.

56:42.651 --> 56:44.211
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, this is a mad dash for life.

56:45.031 --> 56:46.512
[UNKNOWN]: And I said to myself, I said, DK,

56:47.824 --> 56:48.665
[UNKNOWN]: Get under this fire truck.

56:48.685 --> 56:49.265
[UNKNOWN]: There's a fire truck.

56:49.285 --> 56:50.025
[UNKNOWN]: I'm running right beside it.

56:50.325 --> 56:52.486
[UNKNOWN]: Get under it for cover safety.

56:53.127 --> 56:56.629
[UNKNOWN]: And man, I took a step in that direction and I just kept going straight.

56:57.449 --> 56:58.930
[UNKNOWN]: A few more strides.

56:59.270 --> 57:00.050
[UNKNOWN]: There's a pickup truck.

57:00.130 --> 57:01.131
[UNKNOWN]: It's like DK get under that.

57:01.811 --> 57:06.354
[UNKNOWN]: The world's coming down and I took a step in that direction and then for some reason I kept running straight.

57:07.514 --> 57:10.616
[UNKNOWN]: You know, there's no, there's no proverb and part of the Old Testament.

57:10.656 --> 57:14.478
[UNKNOWN]: It says the heart of a man plans his ways, but the Lord establishes his steps.

57:16.087 --> 57:18.628
[UNKNOWN]: And we'll bookmark that and we'll come back to it later.

57:19.148 --> 57:22.890
[UNKNOWN]: There's a reason why I didn't get under those vehicles.

57:23.530 --> 57:25.871
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm not thinking that, I'm going to even consider that.

57:25.891 --> 57:28.992
[UNKNOWN]: I'm running, and like everything, I just described you with seconds, right?

57:29.732 --> 57:33.094
[UNKNOWN]: And then did man, the lights went out.

57:33.954 --> 57:39.636
[UNKNOWN]: That bright blue September day just became a dark night of horrors.

57:41.537 --> 57:47.438
[UNKNOWN]: I'm my face, my mouth, my nose, my ear, everything's filled with pulverized concrete instantly.

57:47.458 --> 57:48.759
[UNKNOWN]: I'm coughing, I'm choking, I'm spitting.

57:48.979 --> 57:53.660
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm still running mind you, because there's still some debris falling around me.

57:53.880 --> 58:00.722
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I think pretty sure I ran like full-speed into a park car, like you couldn't see the visibility was less than two feet, right?

58:01.822 --> 58:08.343
[UNKNOWN]: And I go a few more strides at that point, I'm still in the storm, of course, but there's nothing falling around me.

58:12.891 --> 58:19.978
[UNKNOWN]: and um, and that's where I just had this really, really interesting encounter, man.

58:20.018 --> 58:27.925
[UNKNOWN]: I just, out of this darkness came this piercing light, like just, there's some light coming from somewhere.

58:27.945 --> 58:29.526
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, dude, what is that?

58:29.927 --> 58:30.287
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.

58:30.307 --> 58:31.568
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know if this is the end.

58:32.509 --> 58:46.833
[UNKNOWN]: And my dad, I don't know, but I'm going to go to the light, and so, and I stagger across the street, and I'm looking, I realize that that light is coming from, it's coming from the north, a tiny, I'm looking up a tiny alley, you know, between two buildings, and just a little bit of sunlight, it's piercing through.

58:47.633 --> 58:49.653
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, cool, let's get out of here, I go to light, I'm out.

58:50.874 --> 58:53.594
[UNKNOWN]: And then I just stopped, man.

58:56.275 --> 58:58.056
[UNKNOWN]: It's hard to describe, and I did the best I

59:01.549 --> 59:08.336
[UNKNOWN]: That cloud kind of suffocated all noise, you know, except for like screams and cries and darkness.

59:08.717 --> 59:09.217
[UNKNOWN]: It's really weird.

59:09.798 --> 59:19.729
[UNKNOWN]: Like I couldn't hear anything, except for the people that were just crying, it was just, it saw me in my tracks, I didn't have a plan, I just turned around.

59:21.158 --> 59:23.240
[UNKNOWN]: and started yelling at the top of my lungs.

59:24.300 --> 59:27.423
[UNKNOWN]: You know, come this way, follow my voice, come to the sound of my voice.

59:27.823 --> 59:28.944
[UNKNOWN]: There's light this way, you know.

59:30.225 --> 59:33.588
[UNKNOWN]: I'm trying to be like a beacon, like, you know, just kind of like an auditory thing.

59:34.348 --> 59:44.256
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm yelling, I'm yelling, and I don't know, I probably said it 30 times, come this way, follow the sound of my voice, and 10 or 15 people may be made their way to me in that darkness.

59:44.576 --> 59:45.857
[UNKNOWN]: And I would just shoot them up the alley.

59:45.897 --> 59:47.839
[UNKNOWN]: Go, go, go, go, get out of here, go to the light.

59:50.106 --> 59:52.073
[UNKNOWN]: And now, you know, kind of, in the,

59:53.997 --> 01:00:07.002
[UNKNOWN]: Now when I share this story in front of groups, so I'm talking and doing presentations and stuff, that's become kind of the mission for the rest of my, one of the missions for me for the rest of my days is to call people out of darkness and point them to the light, the only light that matters.

01:00:07.843 --> 01:00:15.426
[UNKNOWN]: And being a man of faith, Jesus says, and I think it's in John 10 that I am the light of the world.

01:00:15.946 --> 01:00:20.308
[UNKNOWN]: Lose you follow me, we'll not walk in darkness, but we'll have the light of life.

01:00:22.222 --> 01:00:24.354
[UNKNOWN]: And I just, I can't experience something like that.

01:00:25.510 --> 01:00:29.312
[UNKNOWN]: And then read something like that and not connect the two, right?

01:00:30.092 --> 01:00:33.274
[UNKNOWN]: And so the Lord's been very kind to me.

01:00:33.314 --> 01:00:42.939
[UNKNOWN]: He's allowed me to take this awful circumstance, this awful story and so forth, and kind of bring something good, something positive out of it.

01:00:43.679 --> 01:00:54.005
[UNKNOWN]: And so I use that in a number of ways to, in my faith journey and what I'm doing now in my second career to help people.

01:00:54.977 --> 01:00:58.985
[UNKNOWN]: You know, those pieces you just keep grabbing, kind of like the one I'm wearing right now.

01:00:59.246 --> 01:01:02.091
[UNKNOWN]: The ones that somehow always end up at the top of the pile.

01:01:02.412 --> 01:01:06.661
[UNKNOWN]: For me, it's been that European win-and-shorts leave shirt from Quints.

01:01:07.053 --> 01:01:11.274
[UNKNOWN]: The Quint sent me some of their gear and the quality caught me off guard at first given the price.

01:01:11.614 --> 01:01:13.695
[UNKNOWN]: That shirt has been on repeat all summer.

01:01:13.995 --> 01:01:18.636
[UNKNOWN]: Breatheable, look sharp, holds up, that's exactly what Quint's is built around.

01:01:18.876 --> 01:01:24.157
[UNKNOWN]: They focus on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials.

01:01:24.197 --> 01:01:31.859
[UNKNOWN]: 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, marino wool, timeless, versatile pieces you reach for day after day.

01:01:32.119 --> 01:01:36.960
[UNKNOWN]: Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60, which is the kind of quality you'd expect.

01:01:37.500 --> 01:01:40.903
[UNKNOWN]: from a luxury brand without anywhere near the luxury price.

01:01:41.364 --> 01:01:49.770
[UNKNOWN]: Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they go direct to ethical factories and cut out the middlemen.

01:01:50.171 --> 01:01:57.977
[UNKNOWN]: You're paying for the product, not the markup, and it's not just the clothing, it's the same approach to betting, bath, and home essentials too.

01:01:58.418 --> 01:02:03.422
[UNKNOWN]: Find your next fall favorites at Quince, download the Quince app for exclusive offers

01:02:06.364 --> 01:02:10.127
[UNKNOWN]: Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

01:02:10.347 --> 01:02:13.009
[UNKNOWN]: It's now available on Canada and the UK too.

01:02:13.409 --> 01:02:17.312
[UNKNOWN]: That's qu-i-n-c-e.com slash mic drop.

01:02:17.673 --> 01:02:19.974
[UNKNOWN]: Find your next fall favorites at Quince.

01:02:20.094 --> 01:02:26.039
[UNKNOWN]: Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to Quince.com slash mic drop.

01:02:26.379 --> 01:02:28.641
[UNKNOWN]: Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

01:02:30.422 --> 01:02:37.541
[UNKNOWN]: It's now available in Canada and the UK-2 that's QU-I-N-C-E.com slash mic drop.

01:02:39.210 --> 01:02:47.617
[UNKNOWN]: Do you have any concept of how far you made it from the tower until it collapsed?

01:02:47.637 --> 01:02:50.019
[UNKNOWN]: Do you have a ballpark idea of how far?

01:02:50.360 --> 01:02:53.763
[UNKNOWN]: That's a great, you mean, what were I ended up?

01:02:53.823 --> 01:02:58.647
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, from the time you started running until it actually collapsed, like how much ground you'd covered.

01:02:58.747 --> 01:03:02.170
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm at the midpoint and this may not mean anything to you.

01:03:02.370 --> 01:03:04.832
[UNKNOWN]: I put a diagram in my book for this reason, so people can see.

01:03:05.272 --> 01:03:06.313
[UNKNOWN]: He was here and then he was here, right?

01:03:07.154 --> 01:03:12.339
[UNKNOWN]: I'm at the midpoint of like church in Vessie Street, I'm on church street near the near Vessie.

01:03:13.080 --> 01:03:18.305
[UNKNOWN]: I sprinted and I made those decisions not to get under, and that's maybe 20 yards.

01:03:19.246 --> 01:03:22.769
[UNKNOWN]: And then just as I'm turning right on the Vessie street, I don't know why I turned right.

01:03:23.710 --> 01:03:28.755
[UNKNOWN]: Going straight would have probably been smarter, but just as I start to turn right on Vessie street, that's when the lights went out.

01:03:30.263 --> 01:03:38.907
[UNKNOWN]: Now, later, I don't know how long it was later when I revisited it, actually, it was just a few weeks later, because I was down there working the pile, as they say.

01:03:39.848 --> 01:03:41.308
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, let me find that alley.

01:03:41.889 --> 01:03:42.709
[UNKNOWN]: Here's the crazy part.

01:03:42.969 --> 01:03:44.050
[UNKNOWN]: I still can't wrap my head around it.

01:03:45.230 --> 01:03:53.094
[UNKNOWN]: I thought maybe half a block, this alley that I was pointing people to and shouldn't maybe that's half a block.

01:03:54.060 --> 01:03:56.762
[UNKNOWN]: I think it was like two-and-a-half blocks or one-and-a-half blocks.

01:03:57.282 --> 01:04:05.407
[UNKNOWN]: But at some point, meaning I crossed a broadway, I ran across broadway at some point, not thinking I'd gone that far at all.

01:04:05.908 --> 01:04:06.788
[UNKNOWN]: It's really well.

01:04:07.048 --> 01:04:07.469
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:04:07.549 --> 01:04:10.911
[UNKNOWN]: Everything's, you know, time and space, and I'll just get twisted in the chaos.

01:04:14.162 --> 01:04:26.454
[UNKNOWN]: from the time that you've led the 10 to 15 people to that alleyway where you saw the light coming through from that point until the second tower came down, what were you doing in that window of time?

01:04:26.934 --> 01:04:27.154
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:04:28.035 --> 01:04:32.199
[UNKNOWN]: And if I have a correct lab, I think there's 29 minutes between the collapses.

01:04:33.460 --> 01:04:58.259
[UNKNOWN]: uh... chaos just madness on the streets were you able to have any idea where you're at other than knowing about how far you made it to get some general idea but were you trying to get anywhere or not i mean visibility is still is still crap right i mean no uh... very little very little uh... you know i had a front row seat to evil on that day of course but man i tell you what i also saw the best in america

01:04:58.779 --> 01:04:58.959
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:04:59.359 --> 01:05:02.021
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, that's all citizens, not civilians, right?

01:05:02.041 --> 01:05:02.601
[UNKNOWN]: There's a difference.

01:05:02.861 --> 01:05:14.668
[UNKNOWN]: I saw citizens kind of pouring out out of bodegas and drugstores and convenience stores with food, with water, with medical supplies, not to hoard and, you know, take it home for themselves, but they were literally on their knee.

01:05:15.108 --> 01:05:17.369
[UNKNOWN]: You know help in helping their fellow fellow people.

01:05:17.409 --> 01:05:22.492
[UNKNOWN]: I saw this one dude big old jacked dude He had um, you know this five gallon water tanks listening to heavy.

01:05:22.852 --> 01:05:27.114
[UNKNOWN]: He had one on each shoulder And he's just leaning forward and people like me.

01:05:27.134 --> 01:05:33.298
[UNKNOWN]: I got under there and just clean it out my eyes and getting a drink like just people kind of serving each other But also so I'll just

01:05:34.278 --> 01:05:40.201
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, as visibility's crap, I saw a guy stagger across the street and the ambulance come around the corner and just nail him.

01:05:40.521 --> 01:05:41.442
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

01:05:41.562 --> 01:05:42.262
[UNKNOWN]: Just never saw him.

01:05:43.443 --> 01:05:54.548
[UNKNOWN]: I heard a moan, I heard a scream, I look, and I take about 10 steps, and now I can see a body, and now I'll get a little closer, and I see that the person is, that's who's screaming.

01:05:55.208 --> 01:05:58.250
[UNKNOWN]: And to this day, here's a weird part about this little scene.

01:05:58.590 --> 01:05:59.731
[UNKNOWN]: I can't remember if there's a man or woman.

01:06:00.788 --> 01:06:03.449
[UNKNOWN]: probably because I'm focused on the bone sticking out of her leg.

01:06:03.889 --> 01:06:04.930
[UNKNOWN]: His or her leg, I can't remember.

01:06:06.411 --> 01:06:08.832
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, picking this person up and I'm not doing well.

01:06:08.852 --> 01:06:14.735
[UNKNOWN]: I'm trying to get in this random citizen with a shopping cart says, hey, hey, hey, put him in here, put her in here.

01:06:15.375 --> 01:06:18.036
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, put him in a shopping cart and take him to the ambulance.

01:06:18.736 --> 01:06:23.298
[UNKNOWN]: You know, stuff like that, so those kinds of things are going on in that 29 minutes.

01:06:24.839 --> 01:06:28.341
[UNKNOWN]: But at some point, I don't remember ever making the decision.

01:06:29.385 --> 01:06:30.905
[UNKNOWN]: But at some point, I find myself back.

01:06:31.445 --> 01:06:33.666
[UNKNOWN]: I'm at the same darn intersection, church and vestu street.

01:06:35.866 --> 01:06:37.006
[UNKNOWN]: I was looking for my guys, I think.

01:06:37.086 --> 01:06:38.167
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's my motivation.

01:06:38.327 --> 01:06:40.087
[UNKNOWN]: I'm still alone at this point, not lagging it.

01:06:41.547 --> 01:06:42.327
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, that's where I am.

01:06:43.067 --> 01:06:48.968
[UNKNOWN]: And I hear that noise again for the second time, that metal, that high pitch metal.

01:06:49.108 --> 01:06:52.109
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, nope, I know what that is.

01:06:52.989 --> 01:06:54.049
[UNKNOWN]: I don't need to stick around and wait.

01:06:54.089 --> 01:06:55.370
[UNKNOWN]: I know that this thing's about to come down.

01:06:55.790 --> 01:06:56.630
[UNKNOWN]: And I started sprinting.

01:06:56.650 --> 01:06:57.670
[UNKNOWN]: I got a little bit ahead of that one.

01:06:57.930 --> 01:07:00.713
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so you got further away at that.

01:07:01.553 --> 01:07:07.339
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I was probably 9 or 10 strides into my sprint when that one, when I started to hear the thunder claps on that one.

01:07:07.359 --> 01:07:08.960
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't see that when I didn't sit around.

01:07:09.320 --> 01:07:13.745
[UNKNOWN]: And so now, and I run a north, but there's no debris this time, falling around me.

01:07:13.825 --> 01:07:16.127
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm not like on the axe, right?

01:07:16.807 --> 01:07:19.750
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm like, I don't want to do that darkness again.

01:07:20.851 --> 01:07:21.392
[UNKNOWN]: That was no fun.

01:07:21.752 --> 01:07:23.574
[UNKNOWN]: So I see this revolving door to my right.

01:07:24.775 --> 01:07:25.356
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know what it is.

01:07:25.376 --> 01:07:29.259
[UNKNOWN]: So I just plow my shoulder through that revolving door and it spits me out the other side.

01:07:29.619 --> 01:07:31.000
[UNKNOWN]: I think it was a lobby of a bank, I think.

01:07:31.841 --> 01:07:38.507
[UNKNOWN]: And my head hits the marble floor and I look up and just as I look up, man, that debris storm goes by.

01:07:41.029 --> 01:07:45.973
[UNKNOWN]: But that's in that bank is where I got the wind in my sails for the rest of the day.

01:07:46.574 --> 01:07:49.316
[UNKNOWN]: Because I'm sitting there, I'm looking at the ceiling and trying to catch my breath.

01:07:49.336 --> 01:07:49.957
[UNKNOWN]: I'm on my back.

01:07:51.060 --> 01:07:52.601
[UNKNOWN]: and I hear the revolving door swoosh again.

01:07:52.621 --> 01:07:57.985
[UNKNOWN]: And here come tough to rough looking dudes come in and I hear them my last name.

01:07:59.004 --> 01:08:22.911
[UNKNOWN]: I kind of say you and I look up I was like dude my guys is two two different agents I got him John Beck and Rob Donovan and and now I was Now getting the band back together getting the band back together and they were young and done like me like they were we were the same vintage right and and then within a minute or two another guy comes to the guy in Frank now He was he was a supervisor.

01:08:22.931 --> 01:08:26.692
[UNKNOWN]: He was much more seniors and I'm feeling really good because now we've got some some leadership as well

01:08:27.573 --> 01:08:33.396
[UNKNOWN]: And now we decided we were waiting there 10 minutes or so, let the cloud kind of dissipate because that was breathing that was no fun.

01:08:34.617 --> 01:08:39.680
[UNKNOWN]: And then we would form two search parties, two agents here, two agents here and we asked for volunteers.

01:08:39.900 --> 01:08:40.881
[UNKNOWN]: There's a bunch of people in that lobby.

01:08:41.941 --> 01:08:50.827
[UNKNOWN]: And I like to say that the civilians in the lobby kind of looked at the top of their shoes and acted like they weren't involved, but some citizens set forward.

01:08:58.246 --> 01:09:01.508
[UNKNOWN]: And started, man, I'd love to say there was a happy ending here, man.

01:09:01.948 --> 01:09:04.730
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we were looking for survivors, not with family bodies.

01:09:05.371 --> 01:09:08.853
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you know, brought back a couple of people.

01:09:09.093 --> 01:09:13.556
[UNKNOWN]: We thought they had vitals and then upon closer inspection, they're gone.

01:09:14.096 --> 01:09:20.980
[UNKNOWN]: We're their deaths from your understanding, all a result of being crushed by debris.

01:09:21.020 --> 01:09:24.943
[UNKNOWN]: Like where they all partially buried, or totally buried, or however you're finding them.

01:09:25.499 --> 01:09:38.613
[UNKNOWN]: They were my my party came up empty, unfortunately, the two that I can remember that were found were from from the other group and we were like keeping We like we were like let's keep about 20 feet between us so we could release each other because again visibility.

01:09:39.054 --> 01:09:41.637
[UNKNOWN]: So they found I don't know if they were they

01:09:42.257 --> 01:09:48.682
[UNKNOWN]: They grabbed them and were able to pull them pretty quickly, so I don't think they were trapped under debris or else I would have known that.

01:09:49.343 --> 01:09:55.747
[UNKNOWN]: But, you know, maybe they got hit in the head or something or a heart attack or just inhaling what they inhaled.

01:09:57.348 --> 01:09:59.710
[UNKNOWN]: How long did you guys do the search party thing for?

01:10:00.231 --> 01:10:03.753
[UNKNOWN]: You know, time is so warped.

01:10:04.734 --> 01:10:06.856
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to say 20 or 30 minutes.

01:10:07.116 --> 01:10:07.376
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.

01:10:07.676 --> 01:10:08.537
[UNKNOWN]: I had this great idea.

01:10:10.103 --> 01:10:11.847
[UNKNOWN]: We were going to go, there's a huge post office, right?

01:10:11.867 --> 01:10:14.293
[UNKNOWN]: In the corner church in Vesci Street, US post office.

01:10:14.313 --> 01:10:15.496
[UNKNOWN]: It's like granite, right?

01:10:15.536 --> 01:10:16.899
[UNKNOWN]: It's like an old school post office.

01:10:17.601 --> 01:10:19.004
[UNKNOWN]: And it's like on damage, of course.

01:10:19.978 --> 01:10:31.225
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, let's go in there and let's ransack this place and borrow some gear, borrow some, you know, we went in there and then my group and I think we came out, we searched this, we're just looking for something to help us in the fight.

01:10:31.565 --> 01:10:34.707
[UNKNOWN]: And I think we came out with like a fire extinguisher of this big, I was like, oh, this is worthless.

01:10:35.067 --> 01:10:40.431
[UNKNOWN]: But then there is this ESU truck in my PD emergency services unit.

01:10:40.571 --> 01:10:45.234
[UNKNOWN]: They're like the jack of all trades, SWAT team, hostage negotiator, water rescue, they do it all.

01:10:46.915 --> 01:10:55.442
[UNKNOWN]: Well, this truck, this unit obviously had responded to the scene, but there's none of their guys where they're probably, you know, they're going.

01:10:56.322 --> 01:11:01.186
[UNKNOWN]: And, but there's some fire underneath this truck starting to, and I think it was John's idea.

01:11:01.206 --> 01:11:08.452
[UNKNOWN]: I said, let's hop up there and get some gear off their truck, and so it's just, if it wasn't so, it's sad and crazy of a scene.

01:11:09.232 --> 01:11:17.872
[UNKNOWN]: John and I on top of the CSU truck and we're just going gear off for throwing, we're throwing best, we're throwing helmets, we're throwing flashlights, you know, pry bars, whatever we thought we would need.

01:11:20.063 --> 01:11:30.885
[UNKNOWN]: And then, John said, I don't remember this, but John says, the cab of the truck, there was a flame for starting to get in there and there were shotguns in there and that's some shotgun shells for starting to go off.

01:11:30.945 --> 01:11:34.226
[UNKNOWN]: I don't remember hearing that, but he's like, we gotta get off of this, like, bad, let's go below.

01:11:35.006 --> 01:11:47.629
[UNKNOWN]: And we jumped off and that, at that point, my case when I assessed the scene and I was back at church in Vesia Street, that's like, let's not get my battle feeling that day.

01:11:49.668 --> 01:11:51.509
[UNKNOWN]: And bro, everything was on fire.

01:11:53.050 --> 01:11:54.771
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, everything.

01:11:55.652 --> 01:11:58.633
[UNKNOWN]: Police cars, ambulances, it's all on fire.

01:11:58.653 --> 01:12:06.658
[UNKNOWN]: Gas tanks, you know, popping off, office paper, everywhere, office paper covering the ground, just like a foot of it, and it's all on fire.

01:12:06.738 --> 01:12:07.479
[UNKNOWN]: It was just man.

01:12:07.859 --> 01:12:09.260
[UNKNOWN]: It's my vision of what helmets look like.

01:12:09.540 --> 01:12:09.780
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:12:13.349 --> 01:12:30.313
[UNKNOWN]: I guess at what point did you guys regroup and do the next thing, or was more was just the entire day kind of spent with the damage control type of mentality of just going from spot to spot helping wherever you could, or what did the rest of it look like.

01:12:41.035 --> 01:12:45.519
[UNKNOWN]: There's two hundred and twenty floors of building on the ground.

01:12:46.440 --> 01:12:47.781
[UNKNOWN]: People are running, everything's on fire.

01:12:47.801 --> 01:12:51.605
[UNKNOWN]: There's no plan for this, but you can at least just tackle the next dummy in front of you.

01:12:51.865 --> 01:12:54.608
[UNKNOWN]: And then move on and tackle the next and do the next thing.

01:12:54.968 --> 01:12:57.871
[UNKNOWN]: And really, that's all we did all day, honestly.

01:12:58.771 --> 01:13:01.334
[UNKNOWN]: We just won, I call it, stacking winds, right?

01:13:01.614 --> 01:13:04.537
[UNKNOWN]: Just getting one win after another, doing the next thing.

01:13:04.577 --> 01:13:05.377
[UNKNOWN]: And at the end of the day,

01:13:06.535 --> 01:13:12.740
[UNKNOWN]: We've got a pretty spectacular story to share and more importantly, we've done some good, you know?

01:13:12.900 --> 01:13:16.544
[UNKNOWN]: We did some damage in the fight, some good damage.

01:13:17.384 --> 01:13:29.395
[UNKNOWN]: And so we're assessing that scene and man, I just want to touch back to something I mentioned earlier, that's where I had a moment, the only spiritual moment I had that day.

01:13:32.252 --> 01:13:33.173
[UNKNOWN]: Everything's on fire.

01:13:33.433 --> 01:13:39.778
[UNKNOWN]: I look across the intersection, and I see that fire truck that I was going to get under for cover.

01:13:40.819 --> 01:13:41.599
[UNKNOWN]: And it's obliterated.

01:13:42.400 --> 01:13:43.081
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah.

01:13:43.141 --> 01:13:44.081
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, there's beams on it.

01:13:44.662 --> 01:13:50.927
[UNKNOWN]: The wheels are bent out like it's flat on the grit, like anyone or anything out of that truck is dead.

01:13:52.374 --> 01:14:00.139
[UNKNOWN]: And then I, so I, I drift my eyes, you know, three or four of paces further north, I'm looking for that pickup truck.

01:14:00.159 --> 01:14:01.620
[UNKNOWN]: And there was just like so much destruction.

01:14:01.640 --> 01:14:03.662
[UNKNOWN]: I couldn't even pick out, couldn't even make out a truck.

01:14:05.743 --> 01:14:09.045
[UNKNOWN]: And I literally, it like took, it's really hard to describe.

01:14:09.065 --> 01:14:09.866
[UNKNOWN]: It took the breath out of me.

01:14:10.266 --> 01:14:10.807
[UNKNOWN]: And I hit a knee.

01:14:10.827 --> 01:14:12.788
[UNKNOWN]: I literally took a knee in the middle of this intersection.

01:14:14.069 --> 01:14:15.550
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, I've never heard

01:14:17.669 --> 01:14:19.270
[UNKNOWN]: I've never heard the audible voice of God.

01:14:19.491 --> 01:14:19.911
[UNKNOWN]: Never have.

01:14:20.031 --> 01:14:20.892
[UNKNOWN]: Some people have.

01:14:21.733 --> 01:14:27.918
[UNKNOWN]: But it says, if I felt a firm squeeze, a reassuring squeeze on my shoulder.

01:14:28.558 --> 01:14:31.921
[UNKNOWN]: And it says, if I heard a whisper in my spirit, I'm with you.

01:14:32.522 --> 01:14:32.642
[UNKNOWN]: Oh.

01:14:34.684 --> 01:14:36.966
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, the Holy Spirit and full effect, I imagine, huh?

01:14:37.926 --> 01:14:40.428
[UNKNOWN]: And it's just, and I let that,

01:14:41.261 --> 01:14:50.266
[UNKNOWN]: I let that hit me for about 30 seconds, and I found a lot of courage and encouragement in that, and then it was time, okay, all right, what are we going to do with that?

01:14:50.466 --> 01:14:55.029
[UNKNOWN]: But so now I just, you know, when I'm sharing with people, it's like, that's a promise.

01:14:55.449 --> 01:14:57.410
[UNKNOWN]: That's a promise that when I read the scriptures,

01:14:59.138 --> 01:15:05.140
[UNKNOWN]: It is on repeat in God's Word that any time you actually ask a man of God to do something hard and do something challenging.

01:15:05.421 --> 01:15:06.741
[UNKNOWN]: He almost, that's a command.

01:15:06.781 --> 01:15:09.082
[UNKNOWN]: He almost always couples it with, with a promise.

01:15:09.322 --> 01:15:20.887
[UNKNOWN]: And if you look at Gideon and Moses and Joshua and all these heroes of the faith, they're given an impossible task and then right out to that comes the promise.

01:15:20.927 --> 01:15:21.747
[UNKNOWN]: He says, I'm with you.

01:15:22.467 --> 01:15:24.028
[UNKNOWN]: And so a man, I just,

01:15:26.055 --> 01:15:26.455
[UNKNOWN]: I'm sorry.

01:15:26.475 --> 01:15:38.558
[UNKNOWN]: I can't tell that's tell the story without sharing that part because because when it comes to to reclaiming this terrible day and making something good out of this awful circumstance, that's one of the things that I cling to.

01:15:38.578 --> 01:15:39.699
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:15:40.119 --> 01:15:42.179
[UNKNOWN]: For good reason, I would do

01:15:45.560 --> 01:15:56.262
[UNKNOWN]: For the the next thing and the next thing that you guys are just kind of tackling one at a time was it was it all pretty similar Or did anything stand out as being a totally different next thing to tackle?

01:15:57.603 --> 01:16:02.584
[UNKNOWN]: Um Well the next thing we did so I had that moment.

01:16:03.144 --> 01:16:08.505
[UNKNOWN]: I get myself about 30 seconds to soak that in and then it's like all right What we're gonna do?

01:16:10.140 --> 01:16:12.441
[UNKNOWN]: And this is the craziest part of this story, man.

01:16:12.461 --> 01:16:17.103
[UNKNOWN]: If you can just imagine, and when I wrote the book, I tried to not just tell people about it, but take them there, you know?

01:16:18.504 --> 01:16:21.285
[UNKNOWN]: And there's one fire truck in the intersection.

01:16:21.846 --> 01:16:24.107
[UNKNOWN]: And it doesn't look great, but it's not damaged.

01:16:24.447 --> 01:16:25.287
[UNKNOWN]: Like it's intact.

01:16:26.528 --> 01:16:28.889
[UNKNOWN]: And Rob Donovan, God bless him.

01:16:29.769 --> 01:16:33.391
[UNKNOWN]: He says, we should hook up a hose to that fire truck.

01:16:33.911 --> 01:16:34.912
[UNKNOWN]: And start putting out these fires.

01:16:36.875 --> 01:16:42.320
[UNKNOWN]: And honestly, my inner monologue was like, that is stupid, that's dumb.

01:16:42.540 --> 01:16:51.389
[UNKNOWN]: We don't know what we're doing, but before I could chime in and give my negative Nelly input, John, the other guy wrote a jump back, he said, yeah.

01:16:52.450 --> 01:16:54.231
[UNKNOWN]: Back in high school, I was a volunteer firefighter.

01:16:54.812 --> 01:16:55.713
[UNKNOWN]: I think I can figure it out.

01:16:55.953 --> 01:16:56.834
[UNKNOWN]: Says something to that effect.

01:16:58.117 --> 01:17:19.375
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, oh, whatever, okay, you guys try to try to figure this out in this guy Frank who was like kind of the elder statesman and he was a former Navy SEALs a matter of fact, and Maryland, Maryland, you know, helicopter operations, medical team, like he's done, he's a one-man task force basically, and I'm like, all right, you guys go at it, right?

01:17:19.895 --> 01:17:23.798
[UNKNOWN]: And so I pulled off the host, I said, that was my job, so here I am, this is my contribution.

01:17:24.599 --> 01:17:34.523
[UNKNOWN]: And I pull out the hose and I'm just standing there and there's fire all around me and I'm just picking my first target all right what's it going to be which car right and I'm not confident I'll be honest with you.

01:17:34.543 --> 01:17:48.208
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not confident that these guys are going they're over there throwing levers and turning knobs or whatever and I think my pants caught fire a couple times and I'm kind of dancing out there and then and then water man water comes pouring out the hose almost knocked me down.

01:17:49.469 --> 01:17:51.269
[UNKNOWN]: How's it going to be kidding me we're doing this right

01:17:53.575 --> 01:18:04.101
[UNKNOWN]: And the other two guys, Frank, was like managing the scene, Rob and John, man, they joined me on the nozzle, we took turns basically at the head because it's exhausting.

01:18:04.641 --> 01:18:10.604
[UNKNOWN]: And we just, we started doing the next thing, which was, for us, here's our, here's our unspoken mission.

01:18:12.158 --> 01:18:13.319
[UNKNOWN]: We're going to make this scene safe.

01:18:14.099 --> 01:18:21.503
[UNKNOWN]: We're going to put out these car fires one at a time, so that the real professionals can come in here and get to the actual rescue efforts.

01:18:21.523 --> 01:18:22.043
[UNKNOWN]: That makes sense.

01:18:23.044 --> 01:18:29.627
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean, I just remember one time thinking to myself, and I'm just being honest, I'm kind of ashamed to say it out loud.

01:18:31.028 --> 01:18:34.370
[UNKNOWN]: I remember we're like on our third car by now, and we're terrible at it, by the way.

01:18:34.930 --> 01:18:39.273
[UNKNOWN]: But I remember thinking to myself, thankfully, I didn't say it out loud.

01:18:42.736 --> 01:18:48.619
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you know, it did not occur to me that there's 343 of them gone.

01:18:49.019 --> 01:18:49.219
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:18:49.319 --> 01:18:52.201
[UNKNOWN]: Like all the ones that were there, Mike, they're gone.

01:18:52.541 --> 01:18:52.761
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:18:53.261 --> 01:18:58.204
[UNKNOWN]: And I just, I just didn't still didn't have a grasp of the normative of what was going on.

01:18:58.244 --> 01:19:03.046
[UNKNOWN]: And so we would take a little bit of time, you know, for units from all other parts of the city to make their way in.

01:19:03.707 --> 01:19:07.789
[UNKNOWN]: At least in that little intersection and that little space, like in that moment, we were it, man.

01:19:08.607 --> 01:19:12.553
[UNKNOWN]: And we got better as we went, but we just started putting out fires.

01:19:13.114 --> 01:19:19.985
[UNKNOWN]: Were there many other people that you saw there, or was it kind of ghost talentish that way?

01:19:20.521 --> 01:19:22.882
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of, that's, man, it's a good question.

01:19:23.323 --> 01:19:26.304
[UNKNOWN]: I feel like it was kind of ghost town-ish.

01:19:26.464 --> 01:19:29.186
[UNKNOWN]: You had some, some citizens that were there for sure.

01:19:29.626 --> 01:19:32.387
[UNKNOWN]: At one point, some random dude just joins us on the host.

01:19:32.748 --> 01:19:33.488
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, who are you?

01:19:33.508 --> 01:19:37.550
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, I think he said, like, I just came in from Long Island.

01:19:38.791 --> 01:19:40.492
[UNKNOWN]: I'm a volunteer firefighter, like this dude.

01:19:40.612 --> 01:19:42.233
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know how I got there, but like,

01:19:43.233 --> 01:19:44.094
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.

01:19:44.174 --> 01:19:45.454
[UNKNOWN]: That was crazy.

01:19:46.275 --> 01:19:49.076
[UNKNOWN]: But slowly, and again, time has worked.

01:19:50.617 --> 01:19:57.441
[UNKNOWN]: Slowly, you know, the professionals are showing up on the scene and it's kind of taking command of things.

01:19:57.761 --> 01:20:00.083
[UNKNOWN]: At one point, I don't know.

01:20:00.363 --> 01:20:01.723
[UNKNOWN]: We're about done with this intersection.

01:20:01.884 --> 01:20:03.144
[UNKNOWN]: We're literally at the end of our rope.

01:20:03.164 --> 01:20:05.786
[UNKNOWN]: Like, we're, our little hose can can go to a further.

01:20:06.406 --> 01:20:08.227
[UNKNOWN]: And at one point, I said, hey guys, look up

01:20:12.195 --> 01:20:18.279
[UNKNOWN]: And we stopped, we took a breath, and we looked up, and like there was like, the place was, the scene was crawling with New York City firefighters.

01:20:18.839 --> 01:20:28.125
[UNKNOWN]: And they're like, you know, barking commands, and issue in orders that we didn't understand, and they're hooking up these huge hoses to the fire hydrants that have made our little hoses like a garden hose.

01:20:28.945 --> 01:20:30.646
[UNKNOWN]: And here's a cool part.

01:20:32.627 --> 01:20:33.248
[UNKNOWN]: Here's a cool part.

01:20:33.828 --> 01:20:39.211
[UNKNOWN]: At no point, then any of them tell us to leave to back out or you're in the way, you know?

01:20:42.271 --> 01:20:43.332
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, we must be doing something good.

01:20:43.613 --> 01:20:44.194
[UNKNOWN]: That's amazing.

01:20:44.414 --> 01:20:45.295
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:20:45.375 --> 01:20:50.181
[UNKNOWN]: Do you know, did building seven come down when the second tower collapsed?

01:20:50.401 --> 01:20:50.742
[UNKNOWN]: Do you know?

01:20:51.218 --> 01:20:57.102
[UNKNOWN]: The time on on that is seven did not come down until 520, so 1720 in the afternoon, much much later.

01:20:57.242 --> 01:20:59.704
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, were you still around there when that happened?

01:21:00.244 --> 01:21:00.645
[UNKNOWN]: I wasn't.

01:21:00.665 --> 01:21:12.133
[UNKNOWN]: By that time, I just happened to get home in time and we'll get to that part later, I watched seven collapsed on the news from home, but I do have some insight in that, yeah.

01:21:12.453 --> 01:21:33.510
[UNKNOWN]: Because there's quite a bit of controversy as to the how and the why and what have you especially that much later and whatever and yeah we can get into that but all right so the firefighters from other areas start showing up from from then until when you actually evacuated what was that window of time like gosh

01:21:35.258 --> 01:21:38.799
[UNKNOWN]: I feel like we didn't leave the scene until about 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 in the afternoon.

01:21:39.680 --> 01:21:41.220
[UNKNOWN]: So this is several hours.

01:21:41.520 --> 01:21:43.121
[UNKNOWN]: We just kept looking around to do the next thing.

01:21:43.241 --> 01:21:48.263
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, at one point, we're standing there, somehow we got some bottles of water, and we're hydrating.

01:21:48.823 --> 01:21:50.464
[UNKNOWN]: And we just hear a call, a cry come out.

01:21:50.704 --> 01:21:51.524
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, we need manpower.

01:21:51.885 --> 01:21:56.366
[UNKNOWN]: And we look up, and there's two firefighters are coming out of the steps.

01:21:56.446 --> 01:21:57.407
[UNKNOWN]: It's coming out of the ground.

01:21:58.187 --> 01:21:58.667
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, what?

01:21:58.907 --> 01:21:59.808
[UNKNOWN]: And they have a couple of victims.

01:22:02.268 --> 01:22:03.609
[UNKNOWN]: and wounded people.

01:22:04.290 --> 01:22:09.655
[UNKNOWN]: And all right, okay, so we go over there and Frank, the gatherer with kind of takes charge because he had so much metal experience.

01:22:10.556 --> 01:22:16.721
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, he just kind of takes over the scene and he just yells, bring me that ambulance.

01:22:16.861 --> 01:22:23.127
[UNKNOWN]: There was one ambulance over there that wasn't damaged and somebody just randomly pulled up, pulled up the ambulance.

01:22:24.208 --> 01:22:28.633
[UNKNOWN]: through them in there, through these, I think it was two victims into the back of the ambulance.

01:22:29.574 --> 01:22:33.178
[UNKNOWN]: And then Frank says, I'll see you guys later.

01:22:33.638 --> 01:22:34.539
[UNKNOWN]: And he closes the door.

01:22:34.799 --> 01:22:35.821
[UNKNOWN]: He's inside the ambulance.

01:22:37.382 --> 01:22:38.323
[UNKNOWN]: I like where is he going?

01:22:39.044 --> 01:22:39.525
[UNKNOWN]: And, uh,

01:22:40.382 --> 01:22:46.063
[UNKNOWN]: And the guys are like, I don't know where he's got him, but he was basically trioshen them because of his background.

01:22:46.703 --> 01:22:48.363
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, oh, okay.

01:22:49.124 --> 01:22:54.005
[UNKNOWN]: So he's gone for an unknown amount of time and we're there doing our thing at some point.

01:22:54.045 --> 01:22:55.545
[UNKNOWN]: He just appears out of nowhere.

01:22:56.425 --> 01:22:58.745
[UNKNOWN]: He's just, that's a form of seal.

01:22:58.945 --> 01:23:00.126
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

01:23:00.226 --> 01:23:01.046
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it makes sense.

01:23:01.066 --> 01:23:03.046
[UNKNOWN]: You know, just kept returning to the fight.

01:23:03.346 --> 01:23:05.287
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean that, and I mean that seriously, has compliment.

01:23:05.847 --> 01:23:07.147
[UNKNOWN]: And but in that meantime,

01:23:08.048 --> 01:23:14.285
[UNKNOWN]: At that point we realized there was the the subterranean part of the of the trade center complex

01:23:15.498 --> 01:23:41.500
[UNKNOWN]: You know, most people don't know how the mezzanine level was like a shopping mall and it's a full-on shopping mall and then below that You got into the subway lines all kind of stuff and so there were some in fd and why guys there And they were like forming a couple teams a few teams to go down into there Looking for victims down there in that shopping mall area basically and so again mindset What else are gonna do it do next thing I mean I know point did

01:23:42.507 --> 01:23:44.072
[UNKNOWN]: Did it occur to us, you know, we could just leave.

01:23:45.536 --> 01:23:48.244
[UNKNOWN]: The three of us, we divided into a few groups.

01:23:48.886 --> 01:23:50.069
[UNKNOWN]: We all had FDNY with us.

01:23:51.196 --> 01:23:53.397
[UNKNOWN]: And that was a weird scene down there.

01:23:53.677 --> 01:24:04.879
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, like straight out of Hollywood, darkness, sparks, beams hanging from the ceiling, kind of like straight out of that scene.

01:24:04.899 --> 01:24:07.000
[UNKNOWN]: And we weren't down there long.

01:24:07.040 --> 01:24:08.280
[UNKNOWN]: There's glass everywhere.

01:24:08.300 --> 01:24:09.861
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, really danger.

01:24:09.981 --> 01:24:11.861
[UNKNOWN]: Really a bad decision on all of our parts.

01:24:12.321 --> 01:24:13.281
[UNKNOWN]: We weren't down there long.

01:24:13.361 --> 01:24:17.802
[UNKNOWN]: When all of a sudden, one of the fireguards I was with, his radio started crackling.

01:24:18.063 --> 01:24:19.343
[UNKNOWN]: We felt a rumble, felt a shake.

01:24:20.259 --> 01:24:22.060
[UNKNOWN]: And then there's radio crackles and we're like, what's going on?

01:24:22.340 --> 01:24:27.742
[UNKNOWN]: And there were some kind of partial collapse, somewhat fairly close of that mezding, of that shopping mall.

01:24:28.262 --> 01:24:30.243
[UNKNOWN]: And there are like all units get out, get out, get out.

01:24:30.303 --> 01:24:33.564
[UNKNOWN]: So we beat feet, we scooted out really quickly.

01:24:36.045 --> 01:24:43.608
[UNKNOWN]: And at that time, man, at that point, yeah, just to reconnect from one of our earlier points, man, we got up out of there, we're trying to figure out what to do next.

01:24:43.828 --> 01:24:49.630
[UNKNOWN]: And I saw, I saw the strangest thing, I saw a firefighter talking on a cell phone.

01:24:50.958 --> 01:24:52.819
[UNKNOWN]: I had not seen any cell phones working that day.

01:24:53.559 --> 01:24:55.959
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, wow, that's awesome.

01:24:56.160 --> 01:24:57.120
[UNKNOWN]: I need to call my wife.

01:24:58.600 --> 01:24:59.300
[UNKNOWN]: She thinks I'm gone.

01:25:00.061 --> 01:25:03.001
[UNKNOWN]: And so I stalked that dude, man.

01:25:03.942 --> 01:25:08.323
[UNKNOWN]: He's pacing around the intersection and I'm just right on, I'm waiting for him, hang up and sit and hang up.

01:25:08.723 --> 01:25:10.644
[UNKNOWN]: Very rudely told him that I knew that phone.

01:25:11.784 --> 01:25:15.665
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, I was able to place a call, place a call home.

01:25:15.945 --> 01:25:17.906
[UNKNOWN]: My wife, she was a nurse, but she was off that day.

01:25:17.926 --> 01:25:18.526
[UNKNOWN]: So she was a home.

01:25:19.474 --> 01:25:19.634
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:25:19.834 --> 01:25:20.754
[UNKNOWN]: What time was that?

01:25:21.575 --> 01:25:22.655
[UNKNOWN]: Gosh, I don't know.

01:25:22.835 --> 01:25:24.616
[UNKNOWN]: I can't believe I got rid of the message.

01:25:25.236 --> 01:25:26.516
[UNKNOWN]: I'm thinking too ish.

01:25:26.976 --> 01:25:27.496
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.

01:25:27.536 --> 01:25:29.377
[UNKNOWN]: So you up, she didn't answer, she did that.

01:25:30.797 --> 01:25:31.318
[UNKNOWN]: She didn't answer.

01:25:31.658 --> 01:25:31.758
[UNKNOWN]: Oh.

01:25:32.438 --> 01:25:32.998
[UNKNOWN]: She's gone.

01:25:33.218 --> 01:25:36.139
[UNKNOWN]: She, um, she was in, she was in despair.

01:25:36.919 --> 01:25:38.320
[UNKNOWN]: She could not stay in that apartment.

01:25:38.380 --> 01:25:39.520
[UNKNOWN]: We lived in Hoboken, Jersey.

01:25:39.700 --> 01:25:40.460
[UNKNOWN]: Like right across the river.

01:25:40.800 --> 01:25:42.081
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you just, you can skip

01:25:46.831 --> 01:25:49.577
[UNKNOWN]: That's where she could not stay in that apartment anymore.

01:25:49.997 --> 01:25:52.322
[UNKNOWN]: And so what she did, and this was,

01:25:56.717 --> 01:25:58.778
[UNKNOWN]: Honestly, it's the only part of the story that still bothers me.

01:26:01.019 --> 01:26:14.025
[UNKNOWN]: What she did was she laughed, and she walked about 10 blocks to the south of town, and she walked out on the pier, and the pier in the south of Hoboken sits directly across from what used to be the real trade center at this point.

01:26:15.385 --> 01:26:18.187
[UNKNOWN]: And she sat on this grassy part of the pier, and she described,

01:26:19.607 --> 01:26:19.988
[UNKNOWN]: prayed.

01:26:21.188 --> 01:26:24.510
[UNKNOWN]: She was asking God, what do I do with the rest of my life?

01:26:25.430 --> 01:26:27.792
[UNKNOWN]: How do I tell his parents like all of these things?

01:26:27.832 --> 01:26:33.755
[UNKNOWN]: Like just to hear her tell the story, she'll never tell the story publicly.

01:26:33.795 --> 01:26:36.536
[UNKNOWN]: She just, she just won't do it.

01:26:36.916 --> 01:26:43.019
[UNKNOWN]: Man, so when it got to that, that was a hardest part, the hardest chapter of the book to write was her personal.

01:26:43.039 --> 01:26:43.740
[UNKNOWN]: And I offered to her,

01:26:46.561 --> 01:26:52.746
[UNKNOWN]: People would love to hear her, she's I can't do it, that's a place that was just so painful and so dark.

01:26:53.667 --> 01:26:56.649
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know at some point, she's there a certain amount of time.

01:26:57.630 --> 01:27:00.412
[UNKNOWN]: At some point, she makes her way back to the apartment.

01:27:02.387 --> 01:27:04.568
[UNKNOWN]: I had left a message on the old school answer machine, right?

01:27:04.808 --> 01:27:05.489
[UNKNOWN]: What did you say?

01:27:06.349 --> 01:27:08.230
[UNKNOWN]: I don't remember my words.

01:27:09.090 --> 01:27:10.391
[UNKNOWN]: I honestly don't remember my words.

01:27:10.611 --> 01:27:17.295
[UNKNOWN]: I must have said something to the effect of, hey, it's me, I'm okay, you know, things are bad, but I'll see if something like that.

01:27:17.335 --> 01:27:19.796
[UNKNOWN]: I don't remember, and she doesn't remember either.

01:27:20.116 --> 01:27:23.758
[UNKNOWN]: All she knows is, all she remembers, when she recounts it today, she hits the button.

01:27:24.956 --> 01:27:30.300
[UNKNOWN]: Here's my voice, and she falls to the ground, and says, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus.

01:27:30.400 --> 01:27:37.225
[UNKNOWN]: It's like on repeat, she doesn't even know what they're, all she knows, all she knew is that she heard my voice.

01:27:37.585 --> 01:27:37.805
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

01:27:38.526 --> 01:27:38.726
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:27:39.406 --> 01:27:41.968
[UNKNOWN]: Man, that is super, super powerful.

01:27:41.988 --> 01:27:43.049
[UNKNOWN]: I can't even imagine.

01:27:43.409 --> 01:27:43.569
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:27:43.709 --> 01:27:51.215
[UNKNOWN]: All right, so that's around two, you managed to evacuate around three

01:27:52.353 --> 01:27:56.336
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I think it was about I forget I did my best in the book the timestamp here.

01:27:56.356 --> 01:27:59.779
[UNKNOWN]: I was at this time in this time Again, it's all murky, but I did my best.

01:27:59.819 --> 01:28:11.347
[UNKNOWN]: I can't remember, but it's it's Three three thirty-ish when we Leave the scene So from from the time you made the call and and tell you eventually evacuated which was via a fairy correct?

01:28:11.407 --> 01:28:16.611
[UNKNOWN]: Please vote yeah, yeah, can you walk us through that that whole transition process?

01:28:16.631 --> 01:28:18.172
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, we were

01:28:20.565 --> 01:28:21.326
[UNKNOWN]: Frank had a radio.

01:28:21.386 --> 01:28:25.451
[UNKNOWN]: I think he had a Sega service issued radio that it was in his car.

01:28:25.471 --> 01:28:26.412
[UNKNOWN]: I wasn't with him the whole time.

01:28:26.812 --> 01:28:30.797
[UNKNOWN]: I'm guessing he had gone to his car, which was a few blocks away and brought it back.

01:28:31.097 --> 01:28:32.378
[UNKNOWN]: So now we're here in radio comps.

01:28:33.039 --> 01:28:33.279
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.

01:28:33.460 --> 01:28:35.181
[UNKNOWN]: I'm here in voices on the radio.

01:28:35.462 --> 01:28:37.724
[UNKNOWN]: We're all kind of huddled around his radio.

01:28:39.901 --> 01:29:00.631
[UNKNOWN]: And this man, he's on the radio, he's kind of, I won't say his name because I've never asked him if I could use his name, but he's calling for Tom and John, the two guys, remember the two guys I was with originally, in tower one, he's calling their name over and over again, and they're not, there's no response.

01:29:01.792 --> 01:29:06.314
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm just like, number one, they're gone, number two I should have been with him.

01:29:09.385 --> 01:29:14.412
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just, at that point, only day, only time that day, I was a defeated man.

01:29:16.014 --> 01:29:17.797
[UNKNOWN]: Because I got my own head, right?

01:29:17.937 --> 01:29:19.699
[UNKNOWN]: I should have been with him.

01:29:20.040 --> 01:29:21.001
[UNKNOWN]: You shouldn't separate it with him.

01:29:21.241 --> 01:29:25.868
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe you could have done something different, just beat myself up, completely irrational.

01:29:27.893 --> 01:29:30.214
[UNKNOWN]: and just on repeat, they're calling them and calling them.

01:29:30.835 --> 01:29:45.663
[UNKNOWN]: And then we go, we're helping some firefighters, move some emergency gear from one spot of the street across the street to the, and I remember Frank running over to us and says they responded, telling John, they responded.

01:29:46.804 --> 01:29:49.085
[UNKNOWN]: And I just,

01:29:50.850 --> 01:29:59.760
[UNKNOWN]: I literally, like old school, like Tiger Woods, fist pump, like, and I just said, yes, like I was.

01:30:00.200 --> 01:30:04.204
[UNKNOWN]: And that was the only time that day in the action.

01:30:05.130 --> 01:30:06.171
[UNKNOWN]: a lot of emotions later.

01:30:06.732 --> 01:30:09.375
[UNKNOWN]: But in the action, that was the only time that day that I was emotional.

01:30:10.035 --> 01:30:14.220
[UNKNOWN]: When I heard that those two guys that I had started my journey with were accounted for.

01:30:14.240 --> 01:30:26.013
[UNKNOWN]: I uh, I uh, I wept, I started to cry and uh, gave myself about, you know, a minute to get it together and then, you know, try to contribute to the next thing.

01:30:26.213 --> 01:30:26.393
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

01:30:27.474 --> 01:30:36.998
[UNKNOWN]: Um, did you guys kind of collectively decide, okay, we've done what we can do here, now we're just getting in the way it's time for us to, like, was that a collective decision?

01:30:37.058 --> 01:30:39.099
[UNKNOWN]: That's exactly what it felt like, you nailed it.

01:30:39.419 --> 01:30:40.740
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you're like there, right?

01:30:40.760 --> 01:30:41.400
[UNKNOWN]: You're in my head.

01:30:41.420 --> 01:30:43.401
[UNKNOWN]: Like, that's exactly what it felt like.

01:30:43.521 --> 01:30:44.301
[UNKNOWN]: We were in the way.

01:30:44.541 --> 01:30:45.662
[UNKNOWN]: We had done this, we had done that.

01:30:46.502 --> 01:31:02.179
[UNKNOWN]: uh... we were told don't do this don't do that right uh... we've been given our left and right and we're just and and at some point we just felt like we were in a way and at that point since frank now had the comms we found out we're all the higher office had relocated apparently they have relocated like three times because

01:31:02.980 --> 01:31:06.221
[UNKNOWN]: their rally point kept getting destroyed or close to destroyed.

01:31:06.261 --> 01:31:11.803
[UNKNOWN]: So we found out that they were like 30, 40 by blocks north at Chelsea Pierce, right on the Hudson River.

01:31:12.763 --> 01:31:17.565
[UNKNOWN]: And so at that point we collectively decided, you know what?

01:31:17.665 --> 01:31:18.585
[UNKNOWN]: We fought the good fight here.

01:31:19.146 --> 01:31:24.728
[UNKNOWN]: Let's go rally up and see if there's a need an office need or a secret service need that we need to address.

01:31:25.208 --> 01:31:27.329
[UNKNOWN]: And so this is so weird.

01:31:28.289 --> 01:31:29.569
[UNKNOWN]: Frank Scar was a few blocks away.

01:31:29.769 --> 01:31:30.830
[UNKNOWN]: So the four of us walk.

01:31:31.772 --> 01:31:33.713
[UNKNOWN]: And we get we pile on the car.

01:31:33.753 --> 01:31:37.294
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think we're driving 30, 40, but I don't think a word was said in a car.

01:31:37.674 --> 01:31:38.114
[UNKNOWN]: Really weird.

01:31:38.134 --> 01:31:39.855
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, what do you say?

01:31:40.135 --> 01:31:46.097
[UNKNOWN]: But I remember driving out of that cloud and the sun being so bright.

01:31:46.137 --> 01:31:47.157
[UNKNOWN]: I remember me blinding.

01:31:47.917 --> 01:31:51.678
[UNKNOWN]: Like, whoa, oh yeah, it was a bright, beautiful day, right?

01:31:52.178 --> 01:31:53.179
[UNKNOWN]: We just moved out of the,

01:31:54.371 --> 01:32:11.550
[UNKNOWN]: out of the lower Manhattan is since you now that thing covered all of the woman had but i don't know ten blocks or so north and we were in the clear and just just a just a powerful scene yeah from i know you had thoughts of this is a terrorist attack kind of initially

01:32:12.451 --> 01:32:30.450
[UNKNOWN]: But once the kind of actions at the objective of the chaos for eight, nine hours, however long it was, did that enter your mind at all during the kind of next thing, next thing, or were you so focused on surviving, helping people, whatever.

01:32:31.992 --> 01:32:34.974
[UNKNOWN]: the kind of magnitude of what it actually just happened.

01:32:35.575 --> 01:32:37.936
[UNKNOWN]: Was that in your head at all, during that kind of window?

01:32:38.517 --> 01:32:39.337
[UNKNOWN]: Not never.

01:32:39.818 --> 01:32:39.998
[UNKNOWN]: Never.

01:32:40.318 --> 01:32:46.282
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't feel like I had a firm grip on the magnitude until I got home and watched the news coverage.

01:32:46.482 --> 01:32:47.023
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:32:47.063 --> 01:32:48.764
[UNKNOWN]: At that point, I was like, are you kidding me?

01:32:49.104 --> 01:32:50.705
[UNKNOWN]: This is weird out about the experience.

01:32:50.965 --> 01:32:51.366
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, but...

01:32:52.748 --> 01:33:03.770
[UNKNOWN]: Once you did link up with kind of the rest of the staff, the Secret Service crew, was that kind of a high-five reunion and happy moment at all or was it just so heavy that

01:33:05.196 --> 01:33:15.200
[UNKNOWN]: a little bit of both, like we walked it, it looked like to me it was like a large bar room that a place that someone would rent out for like a business function, like a social function, right?

01:33:15.221 --> 01:33:28.406
[UNKNOWN]: So, and I just remember walking in the huge room and yeah, there was just a, you know, a large, they're trying to shuttle us through the room because out back they were given medical attention.

01:33:28.426 --> 01:33:29.307
[UNKNOWN]: They needed to check us out.

01:33:30.452 --> 01:33:35.293
[UNKNOWN]: But we were kind of like slow and just because it was a large group of other agents.

01:33:36.434 --> 01:33:40.134
[UNKNOWN]: And they look, they look just like we did, beaten and bloodied and haggard.

01:33:40.154 --> 01:33:43.955
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean, my shoes, the souls of my shoes at the end of day were melted.

01:33:44.015 --> 01:33:46.736
[UNKNOWN]: Like malformed, because it's because of the heat from the fire.

01:33:47.316 --> 01:33:50.817
[UNKNOWN]: My pants were three or four inches short at the end of the day, because they caught fire several times.

01:33:50.837 --> 01:33:52.738
[UNKNOWN]: I lost my suit coat at some point.

01:33:52.758 --> 01:33:57.259
[UNKNOWN]: I ditched that, obviously, but I'm in this nice dress shirt, white dress shirt that's now black.

01:33:58.399 --> 01:34:18.304
[UNKNOWN]: just beating in and that's one of the funny things is they were I can't remember the name of this little establishment but they were hanging out T-shirts They're like everyone get a fresh shirt You know we were ripping off our our tattered mess and and so at that point they They shut they shut all this out back and you know received a quick e-mail right.

01:34:18.504 --> 01:34:20.925
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and you said there was 30-40 of you or so

01:34:21.773 --> 01:34:23.975
[UNKNOWN]: At this point, there's more, yeah, at this point, there's more.

01:34:24.015 --> 01:34:30.641
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, the office, yeah, at the time, I believe it was the largest field office in the night.

01:34:30.661 --> 01:34:31.342
[UNKNOWN]: We were like 150 strong.

01:34:31.402 --> 01:34:31.942
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wow.

01:34:32.143 --> 01:34:32.603
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:34:32.663 --> 01:34:33.063
[UNKNOWN]: It was a lot.

01:34:33.103 --> 01:34:37.427
[UNKNOWN]: Now, everyone wasn't there at that day and everybody, different people out on assignments.

01:34:37.688 --> 01:34:40.310
[UNKNOWN]: I have no idea how many were on scene.

01:34:40.610 --> 01:34:41.251
[UNKNOWN]: Several dozen.

01:34:41.571 --> 01:34:41.911
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah.

01:34:41.951 --> 01:34:42.111
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:34:42.132 --> 01:34:42.732
[UNKNOWN]: 100%.

01:34:42.772 --> 01:34:42.932
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:34:46.155 --> 01:34:48.158
[UNKNOWN]: I guess discharge if you want to call it that.

01:34:48.619 --> 01:34:50.141
[UNKNOWN]: What was the direction?

01:34:50.161 --> 01:34:51.363
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, go home.

01:34:52.104 --> 01:34:52.865
[UNKNOWN]: We'll be in touch.

01:34:53.647 --> 01:34:56.351
[UNKNOWN]: You know, our new office is going to be here like that.

01:34:56.411 --> 01:34:57.613
[UNKNOWN]: What kind of direction did you get?

01:34:58.110 --> 01:35:00.211
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, because think about it, your office is gone.

01:35:00.391 --> 01:35:00.631
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:35:00.832 --> 01:35:05.374
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, well, technically not yet, but... Well, yeah, the whole scene is dead.

01:35:05.454 --> 01:35:06.695
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:35:07.135 --> 01:35:09.556
[UNKNOWN]: We would go on to lose all of our vehicles.

01:35:09.836 --> 01:35:16.760
[UNKNOWN]: All of our, like the vehicles, the normal government cars that I would drive, we parked our parking lots for underneath World Trade 1 and 2.

01:35:17.260 --> 01:35:17.781
[UNKNOWN]: So they're gone.

01:35:18.621 --> 01:35:24.924
[UNKNOWN]: Our armored cars, we would lose those, most of them, all of our weapons and computers and case files.

01:35:24.964 --> 01:35:25.645
[UNKNOWN]: The whole thing's gone.

01:35:26.485 --> 01:35:34.967
[UNKNOWN]: For that moment at least, somebody, you know, pulled off this, this miracle, they're like, hey, raise your hand if you live in Jersey, and I don't know.

01:35:35.287 --> 01:35:47.410
[UNKNOWN]: I'm thinking it's about 12, 15 of us, raise our hand, and like, all right, you know, 20 minutes, there's going to be a police boat or two here, and we've already coordinated with the agents in Jersey, the New York New York New Jersey agents.

01:35:48.791 --> 01:35:51.271
[UNKNOWN]: They're going to pick you up at one at one point.

01:35:51.492 --> 01:35:52.992
[UNKNOWN]: These boats are going to drop you off at one point.

01:35:53.592 --> 01:36:02.260
[UNKNOWN]: And then there's like eight of them and they're all going to go to different towns in Jersey or different regions and so you just hop in the one that's closer to closest to your town.

01:36:02.280 --> 01:36:03.000
[UNKNOWN]: That's kind of a cool thing.

01:36:03.020 --> 01:36:10.186
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, the Jersey agents, I didn't know this the time, the Jersey agents were chomping at the bit to get in the fight or to contribute in some way.

01:36:10.226 --> 01:36:18.653
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, they got, I mean, because they're on the shore, they're just watching and they're being told stand, stand, we don't need you in the city, we need you here and so yeah,

01:36:22.176 --> 01:36:25.658
[UNKNOWN]: I did know at the time that I was, we were part of making history, right?

01:36:25.678 --> 01:36:28.320
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I think the number is 500,000.

01:36:28.340 --> 01:36:31.242
[UNKNOWN]: 500,000 people evacuated off Manhattan Island by boat.

01:36:31.942 --> 01:36:32.723
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

01:36:32.923 --> 01:36:33.603
[UNKNOWN]: That is wild.

01:36:33.783 --> 01:36:35.064
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, Dunkirk was less than that.

01:36:35.524 --> 01:36:37.125
[UNKNOWN]: And it took nine days at Dunkirk.

01:36:37.165 --> 01:36:38.686
[UNKNOWN]: It took nine hours on September 11.

01:36:38.927 --> 01:36:40.027
[UNKNOWN]: That's impressive.

01:36:40.127 --> 01:36:40.668
[UNKNOWN]: It's impressive.

01:36:40.688 --> 01:36:42.209
[UNKNOWN]: And so they dropped us off a jersey.

01:36:42.849 --> 01:36:44.630
[UNKNOWN]: And there's one guy there.

01:36:44.690 --> 01:36:47.232
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, this car is going to Hoboken.

01:36:47.972 --> 01:37:16.719
[UNKNOWN]: and uh... i don't know three or four of us uh... pardon his car and uh... took took us home did you get any direction of calling tomorrow or check in or was it just like go home and we'll let you know it was it being so junior there was a lot of plans being made there was a lot of logistics someone was in a process of pulling off of the fiscal miracle and it will talk about that in a second uh... but for us for someone i didn't like it means i go home hug your family call home wherever

01:37:17.479 --> 01:37:21.081
[UNKNOWN]: Um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and stand by, it was, it was, it was kind of stand by.

01:37:21.101 --> 01:37:25.164
[UNKNOWN]: And that, that stand by lasted until about halfway through September 12th and next day.

01:37:25.184 --> 01:37:25.464
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:37:25.764 --> 01:37:25.925
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:37:26.685 --> 01:37:35.571
[UNKNOWN]: Um, can you describe the, the emotion that you felt when your eyes made contact with your wife for the first time?

01:37:38.212 --> 01:37:41.194
[UNKNOWN]: Man, I don't, I don't forget being dropped in the street.

01:37:41.655 --> 01:37:43.056
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm walking across the sidewalk.

01:37:44.120 --> 01:37:45.322
[UNKNOWN]: to my little apartment building.

01:37:45.462 --> 01:37:47.144
[UNKNOWN]: And this young mother pushing a baby.

01:37:48.145 --> 01:37:52.270
[UNKNOWN]: And I can't imagine what I look like, what she saw, right?

01:37:52.871 --> 01:37:54.533
[UNKNOWN]: And I just remember she goes to God bless you.

01:37:55.814 --> 01:37:56.455
[UNKNOWN]: And like she's crying.

01:37:57.636 --> 01:37:59.419
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm just like, yeah, that was heavy.

01:38:00.680 --> 01:38:03.442
[UNKNOWN]: And so I walk up three flights of steps to my apartment.

01:38:03.622 --> 01:38:06.405
[UNKNOWN]: I climbed a lot of steps at last, that these were my last steps.

01:38:07.566 --> 01:38:10.628
[UNKNOWN]: And I lost my keys, I lost everything.

01:38:11.269 --> 01:38:14.992
[UNKNOWN]: And I go to knock, and of course, the door flies open before I can knock.

01:38:17.113 --> 01:38:28.940
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, man, we hugged, we embraced, she was just in my ear, she's pretty petite, she's, I love you, I love you, I love you.

01:38:29.780 --> 01:38:31.301
[UNKNOWN]: We felt that, she says we fell down.

01:38:31.321 --> 01:38:33.943
[UNKNOWN]: I don't remember falling down like, but apparently we fell down.

01:38:34.783 --> 01:38:58.360
[UNKNOWN]: And it was not, I'll tell you this, it was not some beautiful Hollywood scene where we embraced and we kissed and it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it

01:38:58.860 --> 01:39:07.146
[UNKNOWN]: You do need to go shower, and I took the longest-best shower in my life, yeah, and I'll So you get cleaned up.

01:39:07.826 --> 01:39:10.168
[UNKNOWN]: I assume you get the news on immediately.

01:39:10.588 --> 01:39:16.552
[UNKNOWN]: All you have is a landline at that point to Keep in touch with anybody, but not long after that.

01:39:16.612 --> 01:39:18.253
[UNKNOWN]: I assume just based on the timeline.

01:39:18.313 --> 01:39:20.555
[UNKNOWN]: You watch tower seven come down.

01:39:20.715 --> 01:39:24.297
[UNKNOWN]: Assume you lost everything that was in your office.

01:39:24.377 --> 01:39:24.998
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:39:26.382 --> 01:39:51.672
[UNKNOWN]: ton of controversy as to how why you know there's a lot of speculation as a secret service agent agent that had an office in building seven on nine eleven what is your take as to the why yes i'm watching that at home um... i remember the first i'm sorry were you surprised when you saw it come down but my first memory is watching the second the first time i saw the second plane hit tower two

01:39:53.112 --> 01:40:00.816
[UNKNOWN]: I remember yelling out loud, like, oh my god, like, because it took me right back to the heat on the back of my neck.

01:40:00.916 --> 01:40:01.597
[UNKNOWN]: You were right up there.

01:40:01.617 --> 01:40:02.777
[UNKNOWN]: That was me, like what?

01:40:03.278 --> 01:40:03.938
[UNKNOWN]: That blew me away.

01:40:04.338 --> 01:40:10.882
[UNKNOWN]: And then, and so I'm still recovering from that, and then they're show all the sudden they're showing footage of seven going down.

01:40:11.802 --> 01:40:17.525
[UNKNOWN]: And I remember again, crying out loud, like a piece of me was dying, like I was like,

01:40:19.190 --> 01:40:21.371
[UNKNOWN]: It just, it just, nothing made sense, right?

01:40:21.391 --> 01:40:26.755
[UNKNOWN]: And obviously, and I remember just being emotional at that time, I'm, I'm, I'm cleaned up, I'm watching the whole life.

01:40:26.935 --> 01:40:28.716
[UNKNOWN]: And this would, by the way, be the last news footage.

01:40:28.756 --> 01:40:31.398
[UNKNOWN]: I would watch for weeks, because I was dumb and I was done after that.

01:40:31.918 --> 01:40:35.581
[UNKNOWN]: And so I'm watching it fall and I'm just, I'm just amazed.

01:40:35.641 --> 01:40:41.204
[UNKNOWN]: And here's my perspective on that, a lot of the 9, 11 conspiracy stuff.

01:40:44.022 --> 01:40:44.883
[UNKNOWN]: I'm confessing here.

01:40:45.283 --> 01:40:49.747
[UNKNOWN]: My default mechanism like the iOS is running in my background is not not conspiracy minded.

01:40:50.187 --> 01:40:53.350
[UNKNOWN]: That's just my default setting when I'm headed into any situation.

01:40:54.451 --> 01:40:55.452
[UNKNOWN]: But that being said.

01:40:57.139 --> 01:41:01.063
[UNKNOWN]: I knew I was dipping my toe into this controversy, several trade.

01:41:01.763 --> 01:41:07.469
[UNKNOWN]: When I decided to add this in my book, and I said to myself, should you add this in the book or not?

01:41:07.489 --> 01:41:09.030
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, well, it happened.

01:41:09.271 --> 01:41:13.495
[UNKNOWN]: You're writing everything that happened, you're writing everything that you witnessed, therefore you should write this.

01:41:13.675 --> 01:41:15.036
[UNKNOWN]: And so this is what I wrote in the book.

01:41:16.538 --> 01:41:18.099
[UNKNOWN]: Back and up, we're still on the scene.

01:41:19.824 --> 01:41:24.366
[UNKNOWN]: We had dominated this intersection, we got all the car fires out, the real firefighters are there.

01:41:24.727 --> 01:41:33.871
[UNKNOWN]: And they're working their way down, one group of them at least is working their way down that's Vesci Street and about halfway down Vesci Street, that's where seven world trade is.

01:41:34.571 --> 01:41:38.673
[UNKNOWN]: And so they're working their way down, we're not participating in that, that's just their thing.

01:41:38.793 --> 01:41:41.835
[UNKNOWN]: And all of a sudden, I don't know if it was a collapse or if it was

01:41:42.975 --> 01:41:56.541
[UNKNOWN]: I'm with any year shot maybe from here to that while I'm in a year shot 10 feet of some kind of fire commander and his radio is crackling and All the sudden I see this rush of firefighters pulling back from that from that scene.

01:41:56.961 --> 01:41:57.581
[UNKNOWN]: They weren't quite it.

01:41:57.682 --> 01:42:02.023
[UNKNOWN]: I could tell they weren't they weren't they're very far down the history But they're pulling back.

01:42:02.384 --> 01:42:03.104
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know what's going on

01:42:04.636 --> 01:42:06.919
[UNKNOWN]: And then I'm only here in half of conversation, right?

01:42:06.939 --> 01:42:07.960
[UNKNOWN]: I'm trying to hear him trying to hear.

01:42:08.701 --> 01:42:09.882
[UNKNOWN]: And I hear their fire command.

01:42:09.903 --> 01:42:10.724
[UNKNOWN]: And I put this in the book.

01:42:10.744 --> 01:42:12.366
[UNKNOWN]: I hear their fire commander say something like this.

01:42:12.386 --> 01:42:13.247
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know his rank.

01:42:13.267 --> 01:42:14.268
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know who it is.

01:42:14.728 --> 01:42:15.650
[UNKNOWN]: But I hear him say this.

01:42:15.710 --> 01:42:18.893
[UNKNOWN]: And to his radio, seven is just going to have to burn.

01:42:19.274 --> 01:42:19.995
[UNKNOWN]: We can't get to it.

01:42:22.730 --> 01:42:25.292
[UNKNOWN]: And my impression of that is, the scene wasn't safe.

01:42:25.312 --> 01:42:26.273
[UNKNOWN]: It was too much risk.

01:42:26.854 --> 01:42:28.395
[UNKNOWN]: They didn't want to lose any more men and women.

01:42:29.316 --> 01:42:34.220
[UNKNOWN]: Whatever, I don't know that I can't speak to what was happening on that little part of the block.

01:42:34.700 --> 01:42:36.421
[UNKNOWN]: But he said, seven, it's just going to have to burn.

01:42:36.722 --> 01:42:37.422
[UNKNOWN]: We can't get to it.

01:42:39.024 --> 01:42:40.285
[UNKNOWN]: I don't have a dog in that fight, Mike.

01:42:40.965 --> 01:42:44.688
[UNKNOWN]: I know there's so much stories out there and everything.

01:42:45.089 --> 01:42:47.250
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm not planning my flag on one side of the other.

01:42:47.671 --> 01:42:49.973
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just saying, I heard that with my own ears.

01:42:51.268 --> 01:42:52.489
[UNKNOWN]: only here in half the conversation.

01:42:53.769 --> 01:43:00.132
[UNKNOWN]: And so that clearly that informs my view of the larger, you know, the larger conspiracy theory that would come.

01:43:00.312 --> 01:43:00.492
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:43:00.753 --> 01:43:01.613
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:43:01.753 --> 01:43:10.617
[UNKNOWN]: I assume, or is it correct to assume that from the time you left building seven, early that morning, that you didn't step foot back in and never again.

01:43:10.677 --> 01:43:11.218
[UNKNOWN]: No, never.

01:43:11.438 --> 01:43:12.078
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, never.

01:43:12.398 --> 01:43:19.799
[UNKNOWN]: It was for reference, like I said, I'm at church in the best street, it's halfway down the best street, half a block.

01:43:19.979 --> 01:43:24.640
[UNKNOWN]: So it's not far, but I never ran in that vicinity ever again.

01:43:25.621 --> 01:43:28.521
[UNKNOWN]: I had another, another secret service agent.

01:43:28.581 --> 01:43:36.403
[UNKNOWN]: I know you'll know I'm, we'll talk at the break, but who was there also that mentioned something about generators being at the bottom,

01:43:38.883 --> 01:43:48.126
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, the seagull service was there, there was an emergency services department, like there's a lot of kind of the nucleus of New York emergency response.

01:43:48.466 --> 01:43:48.646
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

01:43:49.066 --> 01:43:56.448
[UNKNOWN]: Offices, you know, located in that building, it was a pretty, from a neural network standpoint, pretty important building.

01:43:57.148 --> 01:44:04.931
[UNKNOWN]: And, and, well, not maybe, I'm sure that that's a big part of why there's a lot of question if, if the rest of it would have been file storage.

01:44:04.951 --> 01:44:05.891
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think people would

01:44:06.491 --> 01:44:22.239
[UNKNOWN]: probably because Curious as to why it went down when it did or I understand why people would say what why would you put an emergency response and agency design for emergency Sponsor literally right across the street from two of the biggest terror targets in the city, right?

01:44:22.299 --> 01:44:23.259
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, okay.

01:44:23.279 --> 01:44:23.939
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, hindsight.

01:44:23.959 --> 01:44:27.321
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah hindsight we can quarterback that that's I was a that's a poor decision for sure

01:44:27.648 --> 01:44:42.419
[UNKNOWN]: But one of the things he mentioned was that there was a really extensive generator network in the basement of that building with a ton of fuel storage, which would explain why it's on fire and potentially why it ultimately collapsed.

01:44:42.499 --> 01:44:43.060
[UNKNOWN]: I've heard that.

01:44:43.080 --> 01:44:46.202
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know that for a fact myself, but I had heard that, yeah.

01:44:49.204 --> 01:45:07.449
[UNKNOWN]: before we get into the kind of after 9-11 and what would come next with the rebel violence stuff like that, just out of curiosity, the physical and kind of health impacts of breathing all that in, like, how are you feeling that night and the next day lung-wise and whatever else, like, were you really screwed up?

01:45:08.029 --> 01:45:10.130
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that's odd, I mean, I...

01:45:11.014 --> 01:45:16.398
[UNKNOWN]: I got trapped in that first cloud, avoided the second one, but then I've spent the rest of the day in it.

01:45:17.118 --> 01:45:20.581
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't, I don't remember feeling any physical ailments.

01:45:20.621 --> 01:45:27.246
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I remember blowing my nose and brown and black stuff, coming out my nose and stuff, and cleaning out my ears.

01:45:27.286 --> 01:45:31.429
[UNKNOWN]: Like I said, it was a long shower trying to get the stench off, honestly.

01:45:31.669 --> 01:45:37.173
[UNKNOWN]: But I don't remember feeling poorly, feeling badly, fast forwarding through into my life.

01:45:38.193 --> 01:45:43.277
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, praise God, I've never had any secondary health ailments.

01:45:43.978 --> 01:45:50.042
[UNKNOWN]: When I was still in this secret service every year, we have a physical, especially when you get to my age or whatever, every year.

01:45:50.062 --> 01:45:54.406
[UNKNOWN]: I think it was every two years, but then it becomes every year, and there was a note in my file.

01:45:54.946 --> 01:45:59.671
[UNKNOWN]: That said, 9, 11 survivor exposed to blah, blah, needs chest x-rays.

01:45:59.691 --> 01:46:07.339
[UNKNOWN]: So that was not part of our normal routine, the physical, but for me and for many like me, we were getting some secondary screenings and stuff.

01:46:07.379 --> 01:46:12.083
[UNKNOWN]: At one point, at one point, they thought they saw something, and they sent me to a specialist.

01:46:12.704 --> 01:46:14.666
[UNKNOWN]: And it turned out to be not, it was in my lungs.

01:46:14.886 --> 01:46:17.949
[UNKNOWN]: It turned out to be nothing, which was really, me, and that was a stressful couple of weeks.

01:46:17.989 --> 01:46:18.470
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but.

01:46:19.471 --> 01:46:21.333
[UNKNOWN]: were you able to sleep at all that night?

01:46:21.694 --> 01:46:30.484
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I imagine it's a mix of being beyond exhausted, but also like the mental kind of negative stimulation like what did you sleep?

01:46:32.287 --> 01:46:33.108
[UNKNOWN]: Not much, man.

01:46:33.428 --> 01:46:34.910
[UNKNOWN]: Honestly, I remember just holding my wife.

01:46:35.130 --> 01:46:36.151
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, wow.

01:46:36.251 --> 01:46:37.433
[UNKNOWN]: Holding and um.

01:46:39.479 --> 01:46:40.540
[UNKNOWN]: We all deal with things differently.

01:46:40.580 --> 01:46:41.641
[UNKNOWN]: We all deal with trauma differently.

01:46:42.421 --> 01:46:51.849
[UNKNOWN]: And for me, the primary way that it manifested itself was in the sleep, was in some nightmares, all the nightmares in both fire.

01:46:53.290 --> 01:46:55.512
[UNKNOWN]: And that, fortunately, that didn't last long.

01:46:55.572 --> 01:46:59.075
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'm thinking maybe six months on and off, not all the time.

01:46:59.555 --> 01:47:02.298
[UNKNOWN]: But it hit me at night when things got quiet.

01:47:02.458 --> 01:47:03.499
[UNKNOWN]: That's when it would hit me.

01:47:03.779 --> 01:47:04.500
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:47:04.520 --> 01:47:06.121
[UNKNOWN]: So nine, 12, you wake up.

01:47:06.763 --> 01:47:21.566
[UNKNOWN]: uh... your offices destroyed uh... everything's in shambles what uh... what do you experience at that point as a secret service agent yeah man i experience a a a lack of purpose i mean the world

01:47:22.723 --> 01:47:26.465
[UNKNOWN]: we don't know to the full extent yet, but the world's at war, right?

01:47:26.485 --> 01:47:36.490
[UNKNOWN]: And America has been attacked, and the president had just addressed the nation from the Oval Office the night before, and it's it's go time, but we were just holding standby and standby.

01:47:36.510 --> 01:47:38.331
[UNKNOWN]: And I remember waking up my wife was like,

01:47:39.372 --> 01:47:52.899
[UNKNOWN]: You know, you want me to turn on the TV and I was like, no, we're not doing that and then later that afternoon, you know, there was about I would say seven or eight agents that lived in that town and that little town of Hoboken and at some point we communicate with each other.

01:47:52.979 --> 01:47:59.943
[UNKNOWN]: Let's hang out at, you know, this one particular agent's house and we all just went over there and we're just kind of

01:48:01.005 --> 01:48:03.325
[UNKNOWN]: It's sipping on beers, it's kind of quiet.

01:48:03.605 --> 01:48:04.766
[UNKNOWN]: The news is on in the background.

01:48:04.786 --> 01:48:06.006
[UNKNOWN]: I'm trying not to watch it.

01:48:06.566 --> 01:48:28.850
[UNKNOWN]: But then we're just hanging out and thinking about guessing about what's next and then a news alert comes across the TV screen and someone says, hey, turn it up and we turn it up and the news alert was something to the effect of White House announces that President Bush will visit the ground zero site on September 14th and this was September 12th, so two days.

01:48:30.942 --> 01:48:31.802
[UNKNOWN]: Michael's the coolest scene.

01:48:32.423 --> 01:48:41.787
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, at that point, the report ended, the guy who owned the condo, turns off the TV and he goes, that's it boys, we have a mission.

01:48:43.095 --> 01:48:48.057
[UNKNOWN]: and everybody poured out the beer that they had or whatever, doing the can, and we just all went home.

01:48:48.097 --> 01:48:53.540
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, you know, something's coming, and tomorrow, we didn't know what, but tomorrow we got to get ready.

01:48:53.600 --> 01:49:03.204
[UNKNOWN]: So that was cool, really cool, kind of putting some steel in our spine, okay, we're gonna, whatever the fight is, we're gonna get back in it in some capacity, right?

01:49:03.264 --> 01:49:06.486
[UNKNOWN]: Because our guy, our chief, our number one projecty.

01:49:07.186 --> 01:49:09.969
[UNKNOWN]: was coming to our city, and our office was in shambles.

01:49:10.289 --> 01:49:14.533
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we were so junior, all of us were so junior, none of us were asking, well, how are we going to do that?

01:49:14.893 --> 01:49:32.989
[UNKNOWN]: You know, the more experienced people were, but at that time, man, behind the scenes, someone, I don't know who, someone was pulling off a logistical miracle, because C-17s were landing out of JFK, full of armored cars, new weapons, new handcuffs, new radios, like you name it.

01:49:34.291 --> 01:49:38.597
[UNKNOWN]: essentially re-outfitting the office in 24 hours, at least from my operational capacity.

01:49:40.020 --> 01:49:43.862
[UNKNOWN]: So what was the next directive work-wise that you got?

01:49:44.202 --> 01:49:45.763
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that directive was B.A.

01:49:45.783 --> 01:49:50.865
[UNKNOWN]: JFK airport and this abandoned little hanger that's not used any more non-descript.

01:49:51.405 --> 01:49:59.029
[UNKNOWN]: Be there at, I can't remember what time let's say, you know, $100 for meetings for briefings and assignments for Friday for the next day.

01:49:59.249 --> 01:50:04.711
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, we all rolled out there, some of us are taking trains, subways, personal cars, whatever.

01:50:04.871 --> 01:50:06.112
[UNKNOWN]: We couldn't get out there.

01:50:08.333 --> 01:50:19.035
[UNKNOWN]: got out there and, you know, first thing I did, I don't want to, I give, I give you credit, you know, we had a group therapy session where we broke off into our investigative squad, essentially.

01:50:19.795 --> 01:50:23.936
[UNKNOWN]: And they had some, you know, some license, professionals, mental health professionals there.

01:50:24.256 --> 01:50:26.736
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, it's best if we talk about your experience, I kind of think.

01:50:27.036 --> 01:50:28.337
[UNKNOWN]: And you're in like this big circle.

01:50:28.397 --> 01:50:30.877
[UNKNOWN]: It's really super, I mean, super awkward.

01:50:30.897 --> 01:50:35.298
[UNKNOWN]: You got a bunch of alpha males and ladies as well that just want to,

01:50:36.404 --> 01:50:37.905
[UNKNOWN]: All we want to do is get back in it, right?

01:50:38.626 --> 01:50:40.807
[UNKNOWN]: But first we got to have our struggle session and stuff.

01:50:40.827 --> 01:50:42.289
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't say that to make a lot of it.

01:50:42.309 --> 01:50:43.770
[UNKNOWN]: Because there's value.

01:50:43.850 --> 01:50:49.935
[UNKNOWN]: And I just don't know if there was value in it on September 13th, but anyways, so we did that.

01:50:49.975 --> 01:50:51.816
[UNKNOWN]: And that's fine, it was good.

01:50:53.197 --> 01:50:58.919
[UNKNOWN]: apparently I said a little too much because people were like, hold on, what, you know, and I was like, oh, I thought we were in the trash tree.

01:51:00.280 --> 01:51:05.042
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe I won't share everything and then the briefing started, like then we all gathered up.

01:51:05.762 --> 01:51:08.643
[UNKNOWN]: And I write this in the book, there had been a rumor.

01:51:09.662 --> 01:51:24.181
[UNKNOWN]: headquarters, and I don't know the veracity of this room, but the rumor was rippling through the body of agents that headquarters was making the decision that New York agents couldn't handle this visit, and they were going to bring in agents from Boston and Newark to Handlet.

01:51:25.783 --> 01:51:26.544
[UNKNOWN]: Think on that one over.

01:51:26.584 --> 01:51:26.804
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:51:27.225 --> 01:51:27.706
[UNKNOWN]: We were like,

01:51:28.976 --> 01:51:35.061
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, yeah, it was like the right field bleachers in Yankees Stadium and we were yelling and screaming and people were dropping F bombs and stuff.

01:51:35.862 --> 01:51:43.769
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, the sack was like, hold on, we're still working on this and, you know, not long after the special agent charge of our office came out and said, no, no, no, we're gonna, we're gonna handle it.

01:51:43.789 --> 01:51:45.311
[UNKNOWN]: So, somebody stood up and did the right thing.

01:51:46.132 --> 01:51:49.154
[UNKNOWN]: And, yeah, that's what we did, so we were issued, you know, given a briefing.

01:51:49.999 --> 01:51:53.802
[UNKNOWN]: Here's the president's going to go here, he's going to land here, he's going to go here here and here.

01:51:55.363 --> 01:52:07.392
[UNKNOWN]: Here's your assignments, here's where you're going to be, here's where you need to report, and by the way, get in line and start picking up your protective gear, you know, bullet proofs and a new sig and all that kind of stuff.

01:52:07.452 --> 01:52:08.473
[UNKNOWN]: I actually had my sig.

01:52:09.274 --> 01:52:12.897
[UNKNOWN]: My 229 was on my hip the entire time, that day, so I had my badge,

01:52:13.557 --> 01:52:18.244
[UNKNOWN]: and my SIG and I bought it and let that SIG go for the rest of my career.

01:52:18.745 --> 01:52:25.514
[UNKNOWN]: Until they exchange, we changed handguns towards end of my career, but yeah, that thing was with me.

01:52:25.715 --> 01:52:26.816
[UNKNOWN]: Did you get to keep it or no?

01:52:27.555 --> 01:52:30.158
[UNKNOWN]: Now, the policy was, we had it turned it down.

01:52:30.538 --> 01:52:33.781
[UNKNOWN]: I wish they had done some kind of buyback because all of us would have bought it back.

01:52:33.841 --> 01:52:34.602
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, they did.

01:52:34.842 --> 01:52:35.563
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's too bad.

01:52:35.803 --> 01:52:36.604
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

01:52:37.224 --> 01:52:45.672
[UNKNOWN]: And so the following day, what is your assignment in terms of adjusting to the president come and to stand on the roll pile?

01:52:46.857 --> 01:52:48.017
[UNKNOWN]: this is where it gets crazy.

01:52:48.297 --> 01:52:57.400
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, he was going to go, I believe, to the Javitt Center, which is a big convention center and meet, meet first responders and meet families of victims, I think, and so forth.

01:52:57.440 --> 01:53:00.661
[UNKNOWN]: So you had to airport, you had the Javitt Center, and you had ground zero.

01:53:00.761 --> 01:53:01.782
[UNKNOWN]: I think there was three sides.

01:53:01.982 --> 01:53:03.102
[UNKNOWN]: I may be mistaken on that.

01:53:03.842 --> 01:53:05.483
[UNKNOWN]: And, man, I'm reading my assignment and

01:53:07.300 --> 01:53:14.725
[UNKNOWN]: I was told to report, I think it was 0500, I'm not sure, to the intersection of church and Vessie Street.

01:53:14.965 --> 01:53:15.205
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

01:53:15.666 --> 01:53:16.146
[UNKNOWN]: The same.

01:53:17.487 --> 01:53:23.571
[UNKNOWN]: I was three days later reporting back to my battleground, and I was excited.

01:53:24.892 --> 01:53:29.375
[UNKNOWN]: There was a brief moment when a supervisor realized, he saw my name on that list, and he said,

01:53:30.717 --> 01:53:34.522
[UNKNOWN]: You know what, I heard your story, we're gonna find something else for you to do.

01:53:35.283 --> 01:53:36.885
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, oh hell no.

01:53:37.386 --> 01:53:40.871
[UNKNOWN]: No, I spoke with an authority that I did not have as a year and a half on the job.

01:53:41.632 --> 01:53:44.235
[UNKNOWN]: And I think he just had a bigger problem to deal with, he's like, all right, whatever.

01:53:44.355 --> 01:53:45.817
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you know, just moved off really quickly.

01:53:46.754 --> 01:53:56.485
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, there I was, man, we go in the next day, car pulled with a few agents, and yeah, 0500 ish reporting to that same intersection.

01:53:56.585 --> 01:53:59.288
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean, the smell is still there.

01:53:59.408 --> 01:54:05.095
[UNKNOWN]: It's still, I mean, it's one of the worst places on Earth at that point.

01:54:07.336 --> 01:54:14.139
[UNKNOWN]: So, going back into that, all of this is kind of refreshing your memory, not that it probably wasn't already at the forefront.

01:54:14.199 --> 01:54:21.081
[UNKNOWN]: But at what point did you actually start protecting Bush and end up on the rubble pile?

01:54:21.561 --> 01:54:23.882
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, we had a few hours prep, of course.

01:54:25.282 --> 01:54:25.822
[UNKNOWN]: Here's my deal.

01:54:25.923 --> 01:54:32.765
[UNKNOWN]: I get there, I get out of the car, I'm standing there, and we're waiting for the briefing to start on-site, and I'm getting

01:54:33.751 --> 01:54:34.431
[UNKNOWN]: I'm getting emotional.

01:54:35.672 --> 01:54:38.474
[UNKNOWN]: I'm, if I'm being honest, I'm losing sight on why I'm there.

01:54:39.714 --> 01:54:42.936
[UNKNOWN]: And I said to myself, you know, I don't know what you call yourself yourself talk.

01:54:42.956 --> 01:54:43.977
[UNKNOWN]: I call myself DK.

01:54:44.457 --> 01:54:46.918
[UNKNOWN]: I said, I said DK, you got two minutes.

01:54:48.339 --> 01:54:49.940
[UNKNOWN]: You can feel this for two minutes.

01:54:49.980 --> 01:54:51.741
[UNKNOWN]: I literally set a timer in my watch.

01:54:52.621 --> 01:54:53.542
[UNKNOWN]: What was that?

01:54:53.622 --> 01:54:54.322
[UNKNOWN]: I said, take it in.

01:54:54.542 --> 01:54:55.463
[UNKNOWN]: Take it in for two minutes.

01:54:56.103 --> 01:54:58.885
[UNKNOWN]: And then you need to lock it down and focus on the mission.

01:54:59.785 --> 01:55:02.206
[UNKNOWN]: It was just, you're going to ask what it was.

01:55:04.879 --> 01:55:09.505
[UNKNOWN]: It was the smell of what I call it, the smell of ground zero.

01:55:09.746 --> 01:55:10.747
[UNKNOWN]: The smell of death.

01:55:14.043 --> 01:55:24.006
[UNKNOWN]: And it's just I just was seeing the images in my mind and and the times by my count at least three times that, you know, I probably should not have survived.

01:55:24.906 --> 01:55:33.308
[UNKNOWN]: And it's just very very very very emotional because the weight of the whole scene had even if I had air dropped in there and never had any experience there.

01:55:33.628 --> 01:55:34.808
[UNKNOWN]: Just the weight of the scene.

01:55:34.828 --> 01:55:38.729
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you got guys are climbing the rubble, you know firefighters and steam fitters,

01:55:42.823 --> 01:55:43.903
[UNKNOWN]: They're looking for humanity.

01:55:43.923 --> 01:55:47.424
[UNKNOWN]: They're looking for lives, man, and it was just a heavy-heavy scene.

01:55:47.484 --> 01:55:47.884
[UNKNOWN]: I saw it.

01:55:48.284 --> 01:55:55.826
[UNKNOWN]: I gave myself that two minutes, and then I gulp it down and focus on the mission.

01:55:56.966 --> 01:56:05.228
[UNKNOWN]: How long from the time you had that kind of internal struggle until the president showed up, and you were actually having to focus on the mission?

01:56:05.602 --> 01:56:14.948
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it had to be several, I'm not sure exactly, it had to be several hours, because they walked us around, the president's gonna arrive here, get out of the motorcade, move to here and move to here, right?

01:56:15.368 --> 01:56:20.132
[UNKNOWN]: And here's my, here's my Mike Tyson quote, you know, everyone has a plan, right?

01:56:20.292 --> 01:56:21.272
[UNKNOWN]: And they get punched in the face.

01:56:21.512 --> 01:56:22.473
[UNKNOWN]: We got punched in the face.

01:56:23.214 --> 01:56:24.995
[UNKNOWN]: And it wasn't al Qaeda, it was just reality.

01:56:27.820 --> 01:56:28.981
[UNKNOWN]: How do you protect a scene?

01:56:29.842 --> 01:56:38.108
[UNKNOWN]: How do you protect a site for the President of the United States while at the same time not interrupting ongoing rescue and recovery operations?

01:56:39.029 --> 01:56:41.851
[UNKNOWN]: In the answer, as you can, it's an impossible task.

01:56:42.451 --> 01:56:46.194
[UNKNOWN]: And not only is it an impossible task, the guys who planned it had what?

01:56:46.374 --> 01:56:48.316
[UNKNOWN]: A day and a half tops to plan it.

01:56:48.956 --> 01:56:50.497
[UNKNOWN]: So man, that plan with sideways fast.

01:56:50.577 --> 01:56:51.338
[UNKNOWN]: It got sideways.

01:56:51.878 --> 01:56:54.160
[UNKNOWN]: It became what we call in the service of soup sandwich.

01:56:54.740 --> 01:56:56.222
[UNKNOWN]: It's just a mess, just a cluster.

01:56:57.062 --> 01:56:59.123
[UNKNOWN]: And, and that's no one's fault.

01:56:59.163 --> 01:57:00.524
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I wouldn't involved in any of the planning.

01:57:00.544 --> 01:57:03.425
[UNKNOWN]: I was just a, you know, young new guy, but there was no one's fault.

01:57:03.445 --> 01:57:04.746
[UNKNOWN]: It was just an impossible mission.

01:57:05.066 --> 01:57:07.807
[UNKNOWN]: And when I say it when sideways, nothing bad happened.

01:57:07.867 --> 01:57:09.948
[UNKNOWN]: It's not like it was a close call of anything.

01:57:10.208 --> 01:57:13.350
[UNKNOWN]: It was just a, it was just a mess.

01:57:13.410 --> 01:57:19.333
[UNKNOWN]: Because when the president showed up, every other elected official, I feel like in the state of New York showed up.

01:57:20.370 --> 01:57:22.872
[UNKNOWN]: and it was everybody with somebody, one of those scenes, right?

01:57:23.513 --> 01:57:31.761
[UNKNOWN]: I'm pretty sure I was jacking up congressman and mayors of this or that or director of this or that and we're just grabbing them and moving them out of the way, right?

01:57:32.261 --> 01:57:35.884
[UNKNOWN]: It was a, it was a mess and so that's how, um,

01:57:37.085 --> 01:57:46.652
[UNKNOWN]: Someone of my vintage year-and-a-half-a-a-job, and that, and that, if I'm assigned to a presidential site, being that junior, I'm not even typically an eyesight of the president, right?

01:57:46.692 --> 01:57:48.693
[UNKNOWN]: This is, you're going to be way out here on this perimeter way.

01:57:49.233 --> 01:57:53.156
[UNKNOWN]: And that was the plan, but when the plan went sideways, we all kind of shrunk in.

01:57:53.536 --> 01:57:58.579
[UNKNOWN]: And so I found myself 18 months, not even two years on the job.

01:57:59.764 --> 01:58:00.925
[UNKNOWN]: I'm almost shoulder to shoulder.

01:58:00.945 --> 01:58:07.969
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, as close as you and I, I'm to the President of the United States, and this is not where I'm supposed to be like this is not, it's not supposed to be this tight, right?

01:58:08.729 --> 01:58:20.196
[UNKNOWN]: And it was, my kid was just one of the most powerful, it's honestly professionally one of the high water marks of my career because of what I witnessed.

01:58:24.338 --> 01:58:28.020
[UNKNOWN]: And what I witnessed was one of the most powerful scenes I've ever

01:58:29.663 --> 01:58:36.698
[UNKNOWN]: Everything that happened, everything that we now see on TV, and none of that was scripted, which I think makes it even more amazing.

01:58:37.059 --> 01:58:37.720
[UNKNOWN]: But here's what I saw.

01:58:38.823 --> 01:58:39.683
[UNKNOWN]: We were working a rope line.

01:58:39.703 --> 01:58:40.903
[UNKNOWN]: We weren't supposed to work a rope line.

01:58:40.923 --> 01:58:43.284
[UNKNOWN]: You know where you go and take that one in the plan?

01:58:43.724 --> 01:58:46.345
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think the president himself changed that plan.

01:58:47.125 --> 01:58:49.886
[UNKNOWN]: Because I don't know how he could not have approached the workers that were there.

01:58:50.666 --> 01:58:52.486
[UNKNOWN]: And he did, we should have seen that coming.

01:58:53.066 --> 01:59:05.329
[UNKNOWN]: But what you've got there, you've got steam fetters, you've got firefighters, you've got construction workers, you've got, let's just say some rough blue collar dudes, men that build America, right?

01:59:05.569 --> 01:59:06.870
[UNKNOWN]: Men that you and I just love.

01:59:08.930 --> 01:59:19.939
[UNKNOWN]: but they're pissed, you know, they're very emotional and they're not like angry at him.

01:59:20.960 --> 01:59:26.665
[UNKNOWN]: But, and I heard later years later when President Bush would speak, I heard him make many speeches, he would talk about this scene.

01:59:27.306 --> 01:59:28.807
[UNKNOWN]: He referred to it as bloodlust.

01:59:30.275 --> 01:59:30.955
[UNKNOWN]: And that's perfect.

01:59:30.975 --> 01:59:32.055
[UNKNOWN]: That's exactly what it was.

01:59:32.555 --> 01:59:34.676
[UNKNOWN]: There was a blood lust in the air.

01:59:35.716 --> 01:59:41.937
[UNKNOWN]: And so, you know, every rope line ever worked was these adoring fans, shaking your hands.

01:59:42.017 --> 01:59:42.817
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I love you.

01:59:42.857 --> 01:59:44.358
[UNKNOWN]: Some little lady and some kid.

01:59:44.378 --> 01:59:46.538
[UNKNOWN]: And then, you know, you had a nice political rally.

01:59:46.558 --> 01:59:47.338
[UNKNOWN]: Well, this wasn't that.

01:59:47.758 --> 01:59:48.758
[UNKNOWN]: They were shaking his hand.

01:59:49.378 --> 01:59:54.439
[UNKNOWN]: What I liked it was the most intense, fiercely and tense friendly crowd of ever seeing.

01:59:56.240 --> 01:59:57.380
[UNKNOWN]: But they had a message.

01:59:59.155 --> 02:00:01.897
[UNKNOWN]: and their message was, you get these some bitches.

02:00:02.818 --> 02:00:05.099
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, that's what the message was.

02:00:05.440 --> 02:00:12.345
[UNKNOWN]: And so I saw a commander chief interact with Joey, the steam fitter from Jersey, right?

02:00:13.846 --> 02:00:17.268
[UNKNOWN]: But in a way that was real genuine and really authentic and extremely powerful.

02:00:17.428 --> 02:00:18.589
[UNKNOWN]: Like he didn't recoil from it.

02:00:18.909 --> 02:00:23.213
[UNKNOWN]: He didn't, okay, like he was in a sense in his element.

02:00:24.056 --> 02:00:29.761
[UNKNOWN]: But you had people that were, I thought looking back it was kind of funny, wasn't funny at the time because it was so intense.

02:00:29.982 --> 02:00:31.223
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, they're calling them by his first name.

02:00:31.543 --> 02:00:37.709
[UNKNOWN]: Like who meets the President of the United States and says, hey, George, but they're like George, you get these M-Fers.

02:00:38.430 --> 02:00:40.772
[UNKNOWN]: Like George, next guy, George, make them pay.

02:00:42.073 --> 02:00:44.077
[UNKNOWN]: those are the kind of things that they're saying.

02:00:44.117 --> 02:00:48.725
[UNKNOWN]: It was just so, so powerful, and he didn't, he just, he just entered into it.

02:00:49.025 --> 02:00:54.495
[UNKNOWN]: I saw Commander and Chief hear his people, hear his people talk, and it's, it's got to be an experience.

02:00:55.982 --> 02:01:03.105
[UNKNOWN]: It's got to be experienced a very few presence have ever had because you're really not going to meet up with that kind of authentic emotion very often.

02:01:03.165 --> 02:01:06.547
[UNKNOWN]: I would say no And man he he he entered into it.

02:01:06.607 --> 02:01:19.193
[UNKNOWN]: He leaned into it and he heard him and he reassured him and he said some things that were were very powerful And I would hear him you know speak years and years later About that moment in his public speeches

02:01:20.405 --> 02:01:34.533
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and I'd be standing safe side, you know, later when I was protection him and he would he would make reference to that that those kind of interactions were the fuel That kept him going when the you know global war and terror got dark and got hard.

02:01:34.793 --> 02:01:37.935
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and Man, it's just an amazing scene.

02:01:38.235 --> 02:01:38.455
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:01:39.056 --> 02:01:41.077
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I will also say that that scene

02:01:42.941 --> 02:01:49.342
[UNKNOWN]: one that, which, you know, the overwhelming majority of the population of the world saw on TV.

02:01:49.562 --> 02:01:58.664
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like that one pivotal singular moment is responsible for God knows how many enlistments in the U.S. military.

02:01:58.844 --> 02:02:11.126
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, that one scene, I mean, hundreds of thousands, I would ascertain young men and women decided to join the military that moment.

02:02:11.684 --> 02:02:15.429
[UNKNOWN]: when he says when he grabs that bullhorn which by the way wasn't scripted.

02:02:15.569 --> 02:02:15.769
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:02:17.130 --> 02:02:19.033
[UNKNOWN]: When he grabs that bullhorn and says well I hear you.

02:02:19.798 --> 02:02:20.839
[UNKNOWN]: and the American people hear you.

02:02:21.459 --> 02:02:23.921
[UNKNOWN]: And the people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear all of us soon.

02:02:24.341 --> 02:02:25.382
[UNKNOWN]: And that place erupted.

02:02:26.102 --> 02:02:31.786
[UNKNOWN]: And this chance of USA, USA, like I'm getting goosebumps right now, just thinking about it.

02:02:32.207 --> 02:02:33.888
[UNKNOWN]: It's the moment, like you said, I cannot agree.

02:02:34.008 --> 02:02:34.748
[UNKNOWN]: I can't agree more.

02:02:35.069 --> 02:02:36.109
[UNKNOWN]: It's the moment that launched.

02:02:36.690 --> 02:02:39.011
[UNKNOWN]: That launched up in entire generation.

02:02:39.051 --> 02:02:48.118
[UNKNOWN]: Thousands of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and to generate what we did know at the time would be a generational conflict.

02:02:48.728 --> 02:02:54.894
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, a lot of powerful moments to be present out, you know, I can't even imagine.

02:02:58.238 --> 02:03:09.743
[UNKNOWN]: From when that took place, and as that wraps up, President Leaves, now you've got to figure out how to go back to work in a war zone.

02:03:09.803 --> 02:03:13.784
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, not even a war zone, in a poca-liptic environment.

02:03:14.565 --> 02:03:20.387
[UNKNOWN]: How did the next days, weeks, months kind of transpire, and what did your mission kind of turn into after that?

02:03:20.527 --> 02:03:30.913
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's all a blur, you know, world leaders, elected national leaders and world leaders all wanted to come to New York City and they're all being told just wait, just wait, give us some time, right?

02:03:31.654 --> 02:03:36.777
[UNKNOWN]: And so like for like the next week, the following week, I was assigned to the pile.

02:03:37.477 --> 02:03:40.239
[UNKNOWN]: I was one of the Secret Service representatives there at Ground Zero.

02:03:41.940 --> 02:03:48.463
[UNKNOWN]: Everyone's just kind of, I mean, you're looking for survivors and maybe now it's shifting into a recovery operation.

02:03:49.163 --> 02:03:54.506
[UNKNOWN]: But you're also looking for evidence and looking for things from your office and that kind of thing.

02:03:55.346 --> 02:03:56.427
[UNKNOWN]: So I was assigned there for a week.

02:03:56.647 --> 02:04:02.510
[UNKNOWN]: And then the following week I was assigned out to the Fishkill Landfill on Satin Island, I believe.

02:04:02.930 --> 02:04:04.050
[UNKNOWN]: Again, working the pile.

02:04:04.090 --> 02:04:05.471
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, just awful work.

02:04:05.991 --> 02:04:09.533
[UNKNOWN]: And so New York agents, if you were assigned in New York, initially you did that.

02:04:10.153 --> 02:04:12.175
[UNKNOWN]: because that was the low hanging fruit.

02:04:12.195 --> 02:04:14.216
[UNKNOWN]: That's how you could contribute to the greater cause.

02:04:14.837 --> 02:04:17.559
[UNKNOWN]: Did that ground zero for a week, fiscal for a week?

02:04:18.480 --> 02:04:23.383
[UNKNOWN]: At that point, they can't hold off all these national leaders anymore and international leaders.

02:04:23.904 --> 02:04:29.448
[UNKNOWN]: And so those duties strictly went to like out of town agents, they started flying agents in to handle that stuff.

02:04:29.969 --> 02:04:36.293
[UNKNOWN]: And the New York agents were back to, okay, we got to handle all these protective visits that wanna come in and pay the respects and that kinda thing.

02:04:37.034 --> 02:04:37.715
[UNKNOWN]: And so, dude,

02:04:38.555 --> 02:04:41.618
[UNKNOWN]: I feel like the next two years were a blur.

02:04:41.978 --> 02:04:47.102
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, operational tempo through the roof, like just never home.

02:04:47.162 --> 02:04:48.843
[UNKNOWN]: And most of that was protection.

02:04:48.903 --> 02:04:51.545
[UNKNOWN]: Most of that was all these leaders wanting to come.

02:04:51.565 --> 02:04:53.287
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, the United Nations is in New York City.

02:04:53.307 --> 02:04:55.248
[UNKNOWN]: So you're always going to get heads of state coming in.

02:04:55.549 --> 02:04:56.890
[UNKNOWN]: But now it was like on steroids.

02:04:57.510 --> 02:05:00.172
[UNKNOWN]: And my wife, I remember my wife, my poor wife coming to me at one point.

02:05:00.412 --> 02:05:01.253
[UNKNOWN]: She was working full time.

02:05:01.273 --> 02:05:01.713
[UNKNOWN]: She's nurse.

02:05:02.014 --> 02:05:03.335
[UNKNOWN]: And she's like, hi, I'm your wife.

02:05:05.004 --> 02:05:05.664
[UNKNOWN]: I never see you.

02:05:07.305 --> 02:05:08.426
[UNKNOWN]: I might as well go to grad school.

02:05:09.026 --> 02:05:10.306
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, honey, that's a great idea.

02:05:10.787 --> 02:05:18.370
[UNKNOWN]: So she starts grad school at that point part time while working full-time because you know, she's trying to be productive because we just weren't weren't together.

02:05:18.390 --> 02:05:19.310
[UNKNOWN]: It was a blur.

02:05:19.511 --> 02:05:20.431
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:05:20.551 --> 02:05:28.575
[UNKNOWN]: And that two and a half years span was the shift for, I guess, law enforcement nationally.

02:05:29.975 --> 02:05:49.043
[UNKNOWN]: now kind of transitioning over to being a joint terrorism task force, essentially, did that impact your work from a investigation standpoint or were you so consumed by the state visits in the protection details where that was primarily what you were doing in that window?

02:05:49.083 --> 02:05:52.844
[UNKNOWN]: I think the hard and core, I don't know if it was nationwide, definitely New York,

02:05:58.825 --> 02:06:21.527
[UNKNOWN]: didn't go on the back burner it went on the burner behind the back burner like I mean it was just it was shelved honestly we weren't doing a lot of criminal work as far as our traditional cases go we started getting more involved in the joint terrorism task force of course but the uptempo I mean because you know when you don't know how to react something like how do you react you just add more manpower so what we were doing two weeks prior with

02:06:22.268 --> 02:06:49.435
[UNKNOWN]: you know 20 agents now that's 40 agents you know so initially when you when you try still trying to get a grip on on the totality of the circumstances and what threat still remains you know the initial response was let's just throw more bodies at it and so and that's and that's fine I'm not complaining but it was man it was it was through the roof and then and then that led into gosh the eventually that two years flies by and all of a sudden you're into the 2004 presidential campaign and you're like oh here we go again

02:06:50.935 --> 02:06:51.135
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:06:51.896 --> 02:07:05.323
[UNKNOWN]: So for the O-4 presidential campaign and then all the way to O-9 when you picked up the presidential or the, you know, George W. Bush protective detail right after he finished his second term.

02:07:05.343 --> 02:07:07.825
[UNKNOWN]: What was that five, five year window like?

02:07:08.249 --> 02:07:10.270
[UNKNOWN]: I did a bunch of different assignments.

02:07:10.671 --> 02:07:13.232
[UNKNOWN]: I got out of the early on after about two years.

02:07:13.252 --> 02:07:14.793
[UNKNOWN]: I got out of the investigative realm.

02:07:15.154 --> 02:07:18.316
[UNKNOWN]: And most of my time is going to spend me spent in protection.

02:07:19.536 --> 02:07:21.418
[UNKNOWN]: I was on President, on President.

02:07:22.098 --> 02:07:25.400
[UNKNOWN]: On Senator John Kerry, he was running for President No.

02:07:25.440 --> 02:07:25.680
[UNKNOWN]: 4.

02:07:25.981 --> 02:07:27.241
[UNKNOWN]: I was on his campaign detail.

02:07:27.762 --> 02:07:32.365
[UNKNOWN]: I spent literally 18 weeks, 18 weeks on the road that year.

02:07:32.985 --> 02:07:33.525
[UNKNOWN]: Learn a lot.

02:07:33.545 --> 02:07:34.586
[UNKNOWN]: A great learning experience.

02:07:35.246 --> 02:07:42.228
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, nothing, nothing trains a young sicker service agent like hitting four or five different cities in a day.

02:07:43.648 --> 02:07:45.569
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we go out for 21 day rotation.

02:07:45.609 --> 02:07:50.250
[UNKNOWN]: So, I mean, you're getting all kinds of reps and great way to learn how to do things and how not to do things.

02:07:50.750 --> 02:08:01.320
[UNKNOWN]: So that was great and I had great, for the first time in an intimate setting, I had real mentorship, because it was three younger agents, and then two really squared away older guys, and they were just did nothing but teach, teach, teach, teach.

02:08:01.340 --> 02:08:02.421
[UNKNOWN]: Those were great.

02:08:02.901 --> 02:08:05.223
[UNKNOWN]: And then I got to kind of get into a counter-surveillance role.

02:08:05.924 --> 02:08:15.032
[UNKNOWN]: But then I landed, I found myself landing in the protective intelligence realm, the intel side, and you know the secret service we don't,

02:08:16.173 --> 02:08:32.324
[UNKNOWN]: necessarily collect intel or produce intel documents we're pretty much consumers of intel like you know different intel communities will come to us and say hey we've got this threat we got this threat and so that's one stream of that you're working with on the on the intel side protective intel and then the other side is you know

02:08:33.224 --> 02:08:48.784
[UNKNOWN]: the people that are making threats overt you know loud threats towards present vice president whoever it may be and so many of those people are involved in the in the mental health category and so uh i mean it's a serious job and i turned out to be pretty good at it but

02:08:49.853 --> 02:08:51.574
[UNKNOWN]: It's also just humorous at times.

02:08:51.614 --> 02:08:55.077
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'll share this one story with you.

02:08:55.157 --> 02:08:55.657
[UNKNOWN]: You'll love this.

02:08:56.017 --> 02:08:56.678
[UNKNOWN]: There was this guy.

02:08:58.839 --> 02:09:02.602
[UNKNOWN]: I'll protect his name to, I'll use the different name to protect the guilty.

02:09:03.002 --> 02:09:04.403
[UNKNOWN]: Anyways, he's getting out of prison.

02:09:04.503 --> 02:09:05.624
[UNKNOWN]: We'll call him Tommy Thompson.

02:09:06.365 --> 02:09:06.985
[UNKNOWN]: He's getting out of prison.

02:09:07.005 --> 02:09:10.608
[UNKNOWN]: He had just spent five or six years in prison, federal prison, for making threats for the president.

02:09:11.348 --> 02:09:17.011
[UNKNOWN]: And so, he's about to get out and his term is up, and they send me another agent to interview him.

02:09:17.831 --> 02:09:21.433
[UNKNOWN]: Our job is to ascertain his sister, I still have to return on, basically.

02:09:21.513 --> 02:09:22.333
[UNKNOWN]: It's a big job.

02:09:22.493 --> 02:09:23.093
[UNKNOWN]: It's a big task.

02:09:23.133 --> 02:09:24.494
[UNKNOWN]: It's a huge responsibility.

02:09:25.234 --> 02:09:36.599
[UNKNOWN]: And so we're going to interview him first, and then we're going to talk to his doctors and the prison staff and see what meds all this kind of stuff, and then come up with a collaborative decision, we need to keep an eye on this guy or not, right?

02:09:36.639 --> 02:09:37.740
[UNKNOWN]: That's basically our job.

02:09:38.480 --> 02:09:41.022
[UNKNOWN]: But it starts with an interview with him, so we'll call him Tommy Thompson.

02:09:41.983 --> 02:09:42.764
[UNKNOWN]: Interview's going well.

02:09:42.804 --> 02:09:43.684
[UNKNOWN]: We're about 30 minutes in.

02:09:43.704 --> 02:09:44.445
[UNKNOWN]: This guy is weird.

02:09:44.625 --> 02:09:48.568
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, he's, I just, I just use real language, he's crazy.

02:09:49.609 --> 02:09:54.413
[UNKNOWN]: And he's ringing his hands and licking his lips the whole time, he's weird mannerisms.

02:09:54.453 --> 02:09:56.014
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, this guy is something else.

02:09:57.195 --> 02:10:00.918
[UNKNOWN]: I said, Tommy, we're almost to the interview.

02:10:00.958 --> 02:10:01.399
[UNKNOWN]: It's gone well.

02:10:01.419 --> 02:10:02.279
[UNKNOWN]: I hadn't said anything crazy.

02:10:02.740 --> 02:10:04.261
[UNKNOWN]: I said, we plan on doing it and get out.

02:10:07.195 --> 02:10:11.498
[UNKNOWN]: He says, well, I'm uh, uh, first thing I want to do is rob a bank.

02:10:14.601 --> 02:10:17.123
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, I'm gonna ask you this again.

02:10:17.183 --> 02:10:18.824
[UNKNOWN]: Dude, let me ask you this again.

02:10:18.844 --> 02:10:20.085
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think you heard me clearly.

02:10:20.826 --> 02:10:24.929
[UNKNOWN]: I look at Ed, my partner here goes, oh my gosh, I said, okay, I'll play.

02:10:26.310 --> 02:10:27.070
[UNKNOWN]: Why do you want to rob bank?

02:10:28.171 --> 02:10:30.373
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I need a rob a bank, so I can have money to buy a gun.

02:10:31.950 --> 02:10:35.172
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, oh, Tommy, we're going down the wrong way.

02:10:35.232 --> 02:10:36.653
[UNKNOWN]: Now I'm fully committed, right?

02:10:36.813 --> 02:10:38.054
[UNKNOWN]: My chips are all in, I'm all right, Tommy.

02:10:38.394 --> 02:10:39.055
[UNKNOWN]: Why do you need to buy a gun?

02:10:39.655 --> 02:10:41.876
[UNKNOWN]: I need to buy a gun so I can rob a bigger bank.

02:10:42.036 --> 02:10:43.698
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I make perfect sense, Tom.

02:10:44.778 --> 02:10:45.959
[UNKNOWN]: Why do you need to rob a bigger bank?

02:10:45.999 --> 02:10:49.061
[UNKNOWN]: He says, well, so I can buy a house and live near my sister in Queens.

02:10:50.979 --> 02:10:51.979
[UNKNOWN]: It's perfect sense.

02:10:52.339 --> 02:10:55.741
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just like, you cannot make this up.

02:10:55.761 --> 02:11:04.263
[UNKNOWN]: So anyways, the interview ends, we collaborate, and we established that we're not going to keep an eye on him.

02:11:05.444 --> 02:11:08.585
[UNKNOWN]: He's not a threat to us, but we are going to alert the MIPD.

02:11:08.865 --> 02:11:12.186
[UNKNOWN]: They're in tell section and say, look, this is a guy getting out next week, whatever.

02:11:13.106 --> 02:11:13.946
[UNKNOWN]: He says he's going to rob bank.

02:11:14.646 --> 02:11:16.187
[UNKNOWN]: So weaker said goes, bye.

02:11:17.338 --> 02:11:23.922
[UNKNOWN]: I friend Ed Nyer, we share a cubicle in the New York field office, gets a call, I'd get takes it.

02:11:25.203 --> 02:11:26.163
[UNKNOWN]: I hear half the conversation.

02:11:26.524 --> 02:11:27.244
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, really.

02:11:27.444 --> 02:11:27.684
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

02:11:27.944 --> 02:11:28.905
[UNKNOWN]: OK. Uh-huh.

02:11:29.645 --> 02:11:30.366
[UNKNOWN]: Well, you're welcome.

02:11:31.166 --> 02:11:31.547
[UNKNOWN]: Hangs up.

02:11:32.727 --> 02:11:33.668
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, what's that about?

02:11:34.488 --> 02:11:38.471
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, well, you can call Tommy Tommy, a felon.

02:11:39.111 --> 02:11:39.691
[UNKNOWN]: Tommy Thompson.

02:11:39.751 --> 02:11:41.412
[UNKNOWN]: You can call Tommy Thompson crazy.

02:11:42.633 --> 02:11:43.854
[UNKNOWN]: But you cannot call him a liar.

02:11:45.390 --> 02:11:45.890
[UNKNOWN]: no way.

02:11:46.391 --> 02:11:49.533
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, dude, did he rob a bank and he goes, he robbed a bank?

02:11:51.314 --> 02:11:53.896
[UNKNOWN]: Well, so, I mean, good God.

02:11:54.156 --> 02:11:59.000
[UNKNOWN]: He had gone into a bank, passed a note across and said, you know, I have a gun, give me all your money, whatever.

02:11:59.340 --> 02:12:01.882
[UNKNOWN]: And because he might pee, he was keeping an eye on, he didn't make it off the block.

02:12:02.583 --> 02:12:04.324
[UNKNOWN]: He didn't make it off the block and they had him scooped up.

02:12:04.344 --> 02:12:07.846
[UNKNOWN]: And they were calling to say, hey, thanks for learning us to do that.

02:12:07.866 --> 02:12:08.607
[UNKNOWN]: And that, and that, well,

02:12:09.611 --> 02:12:24.024
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, to me, it's a little striking that you can spend five or six years in prison for threatening to kill the president, but you get completely let go after doing that for saying, I'm going to rob a bank and do it twice.

02:12:25.265 --> 02:12:31.431
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, legally you can't, or I guess legally you have to let him go even after he says that.

02:12:32.262 --> 02:12:49.546
[UNKNOWN]: Now you're in and into the world, the complicated world of mental health and mental health care and so should this person be institutionalized and not and he had been evaluated by all these docs, you know, the ox that they bring into the prison and they had all cleared them, everyone had cleared them and at that point we can't hold them because he's he's not in violation of any of our statutes.

02:12:50.426 --> 02:12:54.727
[UNKNOWN]: It's just a matter of what are we going to do with this guy, we're going to monitor them or not and so we felt

02:12:55.989 --> 02:13:15.828
[UNKNOWN]: it was a dereliction of duty not to at least report it sure and we did and you know sure enough we could do later there he is yeah yeah well do that is crazy you took over the uh... the judge bush protective detail from on nine to twenty fourteen and at a bunch of mountain biking

02:13:17.229 --> 02:13:28.794
[UNKNOWN]: You know, such a pretty high tempo, I would imagine time for him having been the commander and chief through eight years of Afghanistan and six or seven years of Iraq.

02:13:30.174 --> 02:13:38.177
[UNKNOWN]: He played a pretty active role in doing a lot of bike events and, you know, veteran support events and stuff.

02:13:38.217 --> 02:13:40.198
[UNKNOWN]: What was that five year period like?

02:13:40.863 --> 02:13:44.366
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I ended up serving a 10-year sentence in New York.

02:13:44.446 --> 02:13:45.446
[UNKNOWN]: Like, that's how I say it, right?

02:13:45.787 --> 02:13:48.048
[UNKNOWN]: Most guys are getting out of it at 70 years or so.

02:13:48.088 --> 02:13:49.890
[UNKNOWN]: And I raise my hand to stay.

02:13:50.670 --> 02:13:53.272
[UNKNOWN]: And that's because I had landed on the joint terrorism task force.

02:13:54.093 --> 02:14:02.719
[UNKNOWN]: And I was representing, it's, you know, 45% of the task forces in my PD, 45% of FBI and 10% other, right?

02:14:02.979 --> 02:14:04.680
[UNKNOWN]: The sprinkles on top, I was one of those sprinkles.

02:14:05.461 --> 02:14:06.962
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm representing the surface of the task force.

02:14:07.042 --> 02:14:07.703
[UNKNOWN]: And that was, um,

02:14:08.727 --> 02:14:10.149
[UNKNOWN]: I just, I didn't want to leave.

02:14:10.189 --> 02:14:11.311
[UNKNOWN]: It was a really cool assignment.

02:14:12.012 --> 02:14:12.632
[UNKNOWN]: What were you doing?

02:14:14.155 --> 02:14:18.641
[UNKNOWN]: Again, I got, I just kept getting air dropped into these unique circumstances.

02:14:19.121 --> 02:14:24.769
[UNKNOWN]: I was assigned to the counterterrorism squad that was the considered the historic al-Qaeda squad.

02:14:25.562 --> 02:14:26.383
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, are you kidding me?

02:14:26.403 --> 02:14:30.088
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, these guys, I'm working with agents who had interviewed Kelly Chick-Moham.

02:14:30.549 --> 02:14:31.350
[UNKNOWN]: I'm an interviewing guy.

02:14:31.710 --> 02:14:35.896
[UNKNOWN]: I'm working with agent who had interviewed Ramsey Usuf, the 93 World Trade Center Bomber.

02:14:36.257 --> 02:14:38.259
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, oh, wow, this is like the big leagues.

02:14:39.000 --> 02:14:39.441
[UNKNOWN]: And so,

02:14:40.655 --> 02:14:45.697
[UNKNOWN]: I got to just jump in and at that time that particular squad was focused on Western Europe.

02:14:45.737 --> 02:14:51.120
[UNKNOWN]: So we were doing Al Qaeda investigations primarily based on Western Europe.

02:14:51.180 --> 02:15:03.885
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of logistical hubs, not necessarily the bomb shockers, although there were some, but the guys who are supporting it get them travel documents and give them money and all these kinds of things that it takes to operate covertly in Western Europe.

02:15:04.566 --> 02:15:04.946
[UNKNOWN]: And we were

02:15:05.666 --> 02:15:19.350
[UNKNOWN]: We were investigating that from New York City, which was very, very difficult, but you're working a lot with these, through the legal attest shades FBI's office, through all these other foreign intelligence services and law enforcement, it was, it was amazing.

02:15:19.390 --> 02:15:26.733
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I popped all over, you know, I was all over Scandinavia and Germany and I, all these different places, we did up.

02:15:27.733 --> 02:15:36.280
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I was, I was deployed for lack of a better term overseas on a TDY for, for, for, for, for six weeks.

02:15:37.261 --> 02:15:46.188
[UNKNOWN]: I won't say exactly where I'm Western Europe, but, and we were basically had found a source and infiltrated this dude into this, into this ring, this little avocado ring.

02:15:46.728 --> 02:15:51.252
[UNKNOWN]: And able to take them, take them down, dismantling, I mean, it was tremendous learning experience.

02:15:51.492 --> 02:15:59.655
[UNKNOWN]: How does that work for U.S. law enforcement being in other countries and doing active operations?

02:15:59.715 --> 02:16:05.617
[UNKNOWN]: I imagine the liaison piece of whatever host nation you're in and they're law enforcement.

02:16:05.637 --> 02:16:09.939
[UNKNOWN]: Like that's got to be a complicated, maybe a bit of a dick measuring contest.

02:16:09.959 --> 02:16:10.739
[UNKNOWN]: So how does that work?

02:16:10.779 --> 02:16:11.019
[UNKNOWN]: I mean.

02:16:11.279 --> 02:16:14.521
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, most of the time it's fine, it works well.

02:16:14.842 --> 02:16:18.885
[UNKNOWN]: Of course, you're going to have rival reason, personalities that get involved in egos.

02:16:19.185 --> 02:16:33.735
[UNKNOWN]: But I mean, the FBI, on this particular task force, the FBI, legal attaches overseas, they live there, they work there for several years, they establish contacts, and then you show up, and they're like, you know, the first message you hear is, don't screw this up.

02:16:34.316 --> 02:16:35.236
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, don't screw this up.

02:16:35.316 --> 02:16:37.258
[UNKNOWN]: I've cultivated this relationship for two years,

02:16:37.618 --> 02:16:38.118
[UNKNOWN]: don't blow it.

02:16:38.478 --> 02:16:41.179
[UNKNOWN]: Don't blow it, you know, the ambassador would tell you the same thing.

02:16:42.520 --> 02:16:44.941
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, I mean, it was, it was phenomenal.

02:16:44.961 --> 02:16:48.202
[UNKNOWN]: And then just, Mike, the comedy.

02:16:49.683 --> 02:16:49.903
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:16:50.303 --> 02:16:59.466
[UNKNOWN]: The comedy of being in the room with your stereotypical NYPD detectives and your stereotypical FBI straight lace guys.

02:17:00.227 --> 02:17:00.907
[UNKNOWN]: The separates.

02:17:01.848 --> 02:17:05.250
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and so you think sip of which is a made up thing.

02:17:05.370 --> 02:17:07.912
[UNKNOWN]: No, some of these guys are straight out of central casting row.

02:17:08.052 --> 02:17:16.897
[UNKNOWN]: I mean I would and I didn't have a dog in the fight, you know, and so I just got there I got to sit there in the middle and kind of stir the pot if you can imagine that

02:17:18.658 --> 02:17:20.539
[UNKNOWN]: Is there a funniest moment that stands out?

02:17:21.179 --> 02:17:21.779
[UNKNOWN]: Oh my gosh.

02:17:21.839 --> 02:17:27.921
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, everyone's united in a mission, and they take it seriously, because by the way, it's New York for a conciedity, right?

02:17:28.281 --> 02:17:31.442
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, we got hit, but you're going to have fun.

02:17:32.922 --> 02:17:37.444
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean, the MIPD guys would be like, hey, they would look under the FBI guys desk.

02:17:37.504 --> 02:17:38.824
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's been a lot of them under there.

02:17:39.404 --> 02:17:44.746
[UNKNOWN]: You still change their making fun of them for never going out of the street and talking to sources and cultivating sources.

02:17:45.066 --> 02:17:46.387
[UNKNOWN]: And then the FBI guys were like,

02:17:48.328 --> 02:17:50.110
[UNKNOWN]: You know you can't even put a sentence together.

02:17:50.130 --> 02:18:01.084
[UNKNOWN]: It's just and the funny part is you've got you got a lot of younger FBI agents and some of them because of the long I mean they their cases are long and they move at the pace of a glacier.

02:18:01.364 --> 02:18:01.885
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, right?

02:18:03.917 --> 02:18:26.113
[UNKNOWN]: some of those guys never never put cuffs on someone yet and a lot of times especially on a terrorism case you're not going to put cuffs on someone there's going to be you know that that guy's going to see going to have justice when a when a drone hits him in in Tunisia or something I don't know so in the in my pity guys you know they've got they've got 2,000 colors as they call them right or else so so you got that dynamic man and they're just I remember going up

02:18:26.853 --> 02:18:45.800
[UNKNOWN]: We had to meet this person serapticiously, he had information, and I remember going up, he was saying, in my PD guy FBI guy and me, and we were meeting him at this place, and we walked in and he went, before walking, in my PD guy goes, hey, to the FBI, let us, let us to the talking.

02:18:46.740 --> 02:18:56.491
[UNKNOWN]: He's like what do you mean he's like you just when you talk you just piss people off Then they're not gonna like you and he looks to me They have that you're looking to me that they're you know defend me here and I was like no, dude.

02:18:56.511 --> 02:19:00.536
[UNKNOWN]: He's right, man He just he just don't know how to talk to people so man.

02:19:00.596 --> 02:19:03.079
[UNKNOWN]: It was it was a it was a really good time out.

02:19:03.319 --> 02:19:04.501
[UNKNOWN]: I it was a good time because

02:19:06.075 --> 02:19:10.258
[UNKNOWN]: I felt like I was back in the fight, at least I'm out wasn't I wouldn't move in the world.

02:19:10.698 --> 02:19:12.179
[UNKNOWN]: Honestly, I wasn't that great at it.

02:19:12.959 --> 02:19:16.301
[UNKNOWN]: It takes a long time to learn how those task forces work.

02:19:17.122 --> 02:19:25.567
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm not saying here that I was a world changer, but I was a small part of some good operations that I think helped keep America safe.

02:19:26.208 --> 02:19:27.929
[UNKNOWN]: And then you're not gonna leave this.

02:19:28.909 --> 02:19:29.970
[UNKNOWN]: I'll never said this publicly.

02:19:31.711 --> 02:19:32.812
[UNKNOWN]: The big rivalry, of course.

02:19:33.432 --> 02:19:34.973
[UNKNOWN]: At some point we start talking about basketball.

02:19:36.853 --> 02:19:43.643
[UNKNOWN]: FD and in my PD, FBI play basket, they're in this squad and here's my man, 15 of us.

02:19:43.984 --> 02:19:45.206
[UNKNOWN]: We're gonna play basketball.

02:19:45.686 --> 02:19:49.752
[UNKNOWN]: I can't remember what team I was gonna play on, but they're talking trash for like weeks.

02:19:49.953 --> 02:19:50.674
[UNKNOWN]: We should have a game.

02:19:51.174 --> 02:19:52.296
[UNKNOWN]: And so finally one day it's like, all right.

02:19:53.095 --> 02:19:56.117
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know what day of the week I would win today during lunch break during lunch.

02:19:56.717 --> 02:19:59.419
[UNKNOWN]: We're going to run a gym, and we're going to play ball.

02:20:00.299 --> 02:20:00.539
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.

02:20:00.659 --> 02:20:01.180
[UNKNOWN]: So we do that.

02:20:01.380 --> 02:20:04.962
[UNKNOWN]: Wednesday comes and talk and trash and back and forth.

02:20:05.002 --> 02:20:06.583
[UNKNOWN]: I don't even remember who won.

02:20:06.603 --> 02:20:11.445
[UNKNOWN]: We play one game, but we're like, hey, we've got time, we've got 10 minutes before we've got to get back.

02:20:11.926 --> 02:20:12.706
[UNKNOWN]: Let's play a short game.

02:20:13.547 --> 02:20:17.589
[UNKNOWN]: And then a guy goes, I think we should head back to the office.

02:20:19.190 --> 02:20:20.170
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, why?

02:20:20.250 --> 02:20:21.091
[UNKNOWN]: Everybody check your phones.

02:20:21.998 --> 02:20:33.247
[UNKNOWN]: And then we were on our lunch break, and we were checking our phone, and news reports, we were getting flashes and alerts that there was a plane in the Hudson River, Miracle in the Hudson.

02:20:33.427 --> 02:20:33.667
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

02:20:34.708 --> 02:20:46.157
[UNKNOWN]: And of course, it was from the result of a bird strike, and so all that we know not but at the time, we're like, oh, is there a plane in the water in New York City, is there a terrorism

02:20:48.301 --> 02:21:01.291
[UNKNOWN]: Oh yeah, let's let's get back just in case we need to start getting on something and say we all go out and we were we were at Chelsea Pears right on the water and we punch out of the gym I look out on the water and there's a plane in the river 100 200 yards from us

02:21:04.553 --> 02:21:05.734
[UNKNOWN]: And the evacuation had been complete.

02:21:05.754 --> 02:21:07.435
[UNKNOWN]: There's like a couple of police boats out there.

02:21:07.695 --> 02:21:09.936
[UNKNOWN]: They weren't getting anybody off the plane.

02:21:10.516 --> 02:21:14.798
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm just like, of all the places to be playing basketball during a lunch hour.

02:21:15.739 --> 02:21:21.001
[UNKNOWN]: And at that point, I'm starting to think, Mike, am I like the force gump of the secret service?

02:21:21.341 --> 02:21:26.444
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you know, place some minor in significant role and all these big crazy events?

02:21:26.604 --> 02:21:27.124
[UNKNOWN]: That's wild.

02:21:27.164 --> 02:21:31.727
[UNKNOWN]: It just kind of blew me away, but my experience there was, I'm very grateful for it.

02:21:32.447 --> 02:21:44.350
[UNKNOWN]: What's interesting, I think it's something that not a lot of people myself included would even know that the Secret Service has input and plays a role in a joint terrorism task force.

02:21:44.430 --> 02:22:01.014
[UNKNOWN]: Now, is that from a design standpoint to, I guess, help or advocate for presidential movements, or is it purely as an investigatory type of function where they would put Secret Service

02:22:02.455 --> 02:22:04.716
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you're there just to chip in and do your part and help.

02:22:05.156 --> 02:22:21.539
[UNKNOWN]: However, when something would come through the pipeline that directly affected your agency, all of a sudden, you're the point guy, and you're reporting and for me, during the, there's sort of been the 2008 presidential campaign, a threat stream started coming through, based out of Africa.

02:22:21.559 --> 02:22:23.800
[UNKNOWN]: That's all, that's the extent to which I'll say it.

02:22:24.700 --> 02:22:28.681
[UNKNOWN]: That needed, and there were some New York ties, some couple of nexus here.

02:22:28.921 --> 02:22:30.522
[UNKNOWN]: So there needed to be some investigative things

02:22:32.602 --> 02:22:44.547
[UNKNOWN]: And because it was related to the 2008 campaign, you know, I was, I was running the ops and I was running these surveillance, I wasn't running out was being a part of them, but I was the guy reporting back to my office.

02:22:46.377 --> 02:23:06.528
[UNKNOWN]: saying hey this is what we're fine and this is this is a pan and out this isn't something like that But you know all the sudden it's you go from playing a very junior role to plan oh no I'm the I'm the one reporting these facts back and that's getting kicked up my chain of command to headquarters at a high level So you suddenly feel the weight of it then yeah

02:23:06.628 --> 02:23:07.289
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I imagine.

02:23:07.389 --> 02:23:07.889
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:23:08.890 --> 02:23:24.027
[UNKNOWN]: So Bush leaves office, Obama gets in, and you wind up on the protective detail for Bush, immediately after he leaves office, you rode mountain bikes with the former president explaining that job.

02:23:26.648 --> 02:23:34.992
[UNKNOWN]: then there's a whole story and why I chose to not pursue DC and we decided to go to Dallas my wife and I.

02:23:35.032 --> 02:23:38.374
[UNKNOWN]: We had two, I have four sons at the time we had two of them.

02:23:39.415 --> 02:23:46.258
[UNKNOWN]: And so we make the family decision and we're going to go to Dallas, George W. Bush, just rolled out of office.

02:23:46.278 --> 02:23:48.420
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to be part of that transition team.

02:23:49.280 --> 02:23:52.182
[UNKNOWN]: And by that time, I just wanted to do all the

02:23:54.093 --> 02:24:03.295
[UNKNOWN]: There was a one you get so now I'm leaving phase one of my career once you leave phase one of your career You can get into some niche things like now they actually trust you to do something hard, right?

02:24:03.695 --> 02:24:22.620
[UNKNOWN]: And so I just I started looking at survey in the scene of of what different options we have quite a more options than you would think And I'm like I'm gonna start pursuing these hard things and so two of the ones I pursued were The rescue swimmer option, which we'll talk here about in a second and then the This this trek we call them truck riders we were

02:24:23.680 --> 02:24:25.942
[UNKNOWN]: on the mountain bike team with President Bush.

02:24:25.962 --> 02:24:31.146
[UNKNOWN]: So I get to the Bush to tell, and I'm like, I'm raising my hand, I can ride, I can ride.

02:24:31.166 --> 02:24:39.092
[UNKNOWN]: I'm there, a little later, I'm replacing somebody who got who quit, so I'm there maybe three or four months after the main detail had arrived.

02:24:39.112 --> 02:24:41.454
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm a little, I'm the new guy, just for a short time.

02:24:42.095 --> 02:24:43.516
[UNKNOWN]: I'm raising my hand, I can ride, I can ride.

02:24:43.756 --> 02:24:51.122
[UNKNOWN]: And right now, at this time, he is, I mean, I don't know how old he was, he's 60 something at that time, but he is riding hard.

02:24:53.156 --> 02:24:57.858
[UNKNOWN]: He's an impressive, very, very driven, and at that time, physically just getting after it still.

02:24:57.918 --> 02:24:59.339
[UNKNOWN]: I hope I am at that age, man.

02:25:00.059 --> 02:25:00.659
[UNKNOWN]: Just impressive.

02:25:01.379 --> 02:25:04.141
[UNKNOWN]: And so, and they're like, yeah, a kid, well, you got to show us, right?

02:25:04.501 --> 02:25:05.341
[UNKNOWN]: So start training.

02:25:06.541 --> 02:25:07.642
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, well, I know how to ride bike.

02:25:07.662 --> 02:25:08.742
[UNKNOWN]: I've done this before.

02:25:08.762 --> 02:25:12.584
[UNKNOWN]: I've done a bunch of triathlons, and some of them off road, I had experience.

02:25:12.984 --> 02:25:15.005
[UNKNOWN]: And they're like, well, go, you're here in Dallas.

02:25:15.025 --> 02:25:17.306
[UNKNOWN]: Go ride this trail, and go ride this trail on your free time.

02:25:18.195 --> 02:25:20.817
[UNKNOWN]: learn those, and then we'll give you a check ride.

02:25:21.017 --> 02:25:21.917
[UNKNOWN]: You know what I mean?

02:25:21.937 --> 02:25:25.460
[UNKNOWN]: Because there was a school that they could send you to, but they're like, we don't have time, man.

02:25:25.900 --> 02:25:26.720
[UNKNOWN]: We'll do all the job training.

02:25:27.221 --> 02:25:29.402
[UNKNOWN]: And so I go to this trail here in the DFW area.

02:25:30.163 --> 02:25:38.268
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, man, if you're riding hard, there's rocks, there's roots, you're running through creek beds and stuff, you're going to crash.

02:25:39.097 --> 02:25:40.779
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you're just gonna crash, everybody crashes.

02:25:40.979 --> 02:25:43.281
[UNKNOWN]: If you're not crashing, you're not trying to harm him.

02:25:43.321 --> 02:25:43.881
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, exactly.

02:25:44.342 --> 02:25:47.024
[UNKNOWN]: And so, yeah, I'm on my own training run.

02:25:47.344 --> 02:25:48.626
[UNKNOWN]: I've been in Dallas for two weeks.

02:25:49.146 --> 02:25:50.948
[UNKNOWN]: I'm by myself, and I crash.

02:25:52.707 --> 02:25:54.428
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, oh man, my hand is hurt.

02:25:54.528 --> 02:25:58.869
[UNKNOWN]: I turn my hand over and I got a compound dislocation in my hand.

02:25:59.089 --> 02:26:03.471
[UNKNOWN]: My finger, my finger bone is sticking out of my flesh and staring right at me.

02:26:03.771 --> 02:26:05.051
[UNKNOWN]: Going 90s degrees are wrong way.

02:26:05.551 --> 02:26:06.272
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, this ain't good.

02:26:07.032 --> 02:26:08.232
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know where I am, this is a new trail.

02:26:08.252 --> 02:26:09.173
[UNKNOWN]: I've never been on it myself.

02:26:09.673 --> 02:26:11.193
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know where the hospital is, nothing.

02:26:11.733 --> 02:26:14.154
[UNKNOWN]: And so I start running with my bike on the trail.

02:26:14.314 --> 02:26:15.995
[UNKNOWN]: I think I'm going to the park and I'm not sure.

02:26:17.487 --> 02:26:22.269
[UNKNOWN]: This dude comes up, this rider comes up the other way, and he sees me, and I put my hand behind my back.

02:26:22.969 --> 02:26:28.251
[UNKNOWN]: I said, hey, am I going the right way to the parking lot?

02:26:28.351 --> 02:26:30.631
[UNKNOWN]: He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, just go here and here and here and you'll be there.

02:26:30.851 --> 02:26:31.452
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, great, thanks.

02:26:31.772 --> 02:26:32.592
[UNKNOWN]: He said, are you hurt?

02:26:33.092 --> 02:26:33.752
[UNKNOWN]: I said, yes, or I am.

02:26:33.772 --> 02:26:35.293
[UNKNOWN]: And he goes, well, let me see it.

02:26:35.333 --> 02:26:36.193
[UNKNOWN]: I said, I don't think you want to.

02:26:36.893 --> 02:26:37.674
[UNKNOWN]: He goes, no, let me see it.

02:26:38.274 --> 02:26:39.814
[UNKNOWN]: And I pull my hand, I turned over.

02:26:39.834 --> 02:26:40.795
[UNKNOWN]: And he goes, oh, yeah, that hurts.

02:26:40.835 --> 02:26:41.915
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, my bone is sticking out.

02:26:42.515 --> 02:26:45.716
[UNKNOWN]: And he goes, you do a lot better off.

02:26:50.140 --> 02:26:52.521
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like no offense sir, but do you know what the hell you're doing?

02:26:52.802 --> 02:26:54.102
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:26:54.743 --> 02:26:56.204
[UNKNOWN]: And you guys, yeah, I'm an orthopedic surgeon.

02:26:56.944 --> 02:26:57.144
[UNKNOWN]: Oh well.

02:26:57.164 --> 02:26:58.005
[UNKNOWN]: I'll pop it in right now.

02:26:58.605 --> 02:26:59.646
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, let's do this.

02:27:01.098 --> 02:27:12.701
[UNKNOWN]: And he braces me and he, he just, he says, look away, I look away and he caps it and pushes it in and next thing I know, it's back in line and once it's back in line it's sort of bleeding like crazy, but the pain went away.

02:27:13.101 --> 02:27:13.422
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wow.

02:27:13.582 --> 02:27:21.524
[UNKNOWN]: In that while, and then he goes with me back to the, to the, for the parking line, he stitches me up and, you know, he writes exactly what it is on his, on his card.

02:27:21.564 --> 02:27:23.904
[UNKNOWN]: He sends me to the hospital and says, this is what you need to do.

02:27:23.924 --> 02:27:25.405
[UNKNOWN]: And then it ended up being just a,

02:27:26.263 --> 02:27:27.284
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it wasn't broken at all.

02:27:27.304 --> 02:27:28.705
[UNKNOWN]: It was just compound dislocation.

02:27:29.286 --> 02:27:34.451
[UNKNOWN]: And then it's up, I've got this big thing on my, and this is where I learned small detail life on a form of detail.

02:27:35.792 --> 02:27:38.855
[UNKNOWN]: If one guy calls in sick, it messes everything up.

02:27:38.935 --> 02:27:44.221
[UNKNOWN]: You're either calling in somebody on their day off, or everyone's got to do double duty, and it's a pain, right?

02:27:44.861 --> 02:27:48.164
[UNKNOWN]: And so I'm scheduled to be on a trip the next day, the Cincinnati.

02:27:49.183 --> 02:27:50.245
[UNKNOWN]: I get a call from my supervisor.

02:27:50.666 --> 02:27:51.769
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, man, you okay?

02:27:52.069 --> 02:27:52.410
[UNKNOWN]: I'm good.

02:27:53.232 --> 02:27:57.221
[UNKNOWN]: You know, you guys, hey, just by, is it your trigger finger?

02:27:59.064 --> 02:28:00.745
[UNKNOWN]: I go, no, sir, that's actually on my right hand.

02:28:00.765 --> 02:28:03.607
[UNKNOWN]: I'm left handed, so yeah, my weapon side, I'm good.

02:28:03.627 --> 02:28:04.808
[UNKNOWN]: He goes, oh, OK.

02:28:05.388 --> 02:28:07.749
[UNKNOWN]: So you can probably still do that Cincinnati trip tomorrow, right?

02:28:10.111 --> 02:28:13.213
[UNKNOWN]: But I was like, yeah, welcome to a small detail.

02:28:13.953 --> 02:28:20.457
[UNKNOWN]: Every man, so that was my indoctrination into the George West of Israel.

02:28:20.477 --> 02:28:23.459
[UNKNOWN]: What are the odds that you run into an orthopedic surgeon on a trail?

02:28:23.839 --> 02:28:25.721
[UNKNOWN]: I don't believe in Quintzins, it's like I said, I guess I've

02:28:27.890 --> 02:28:33.454
[UNKNOWN]: But the bike job is so you somehow say that you crash the president

02:28:36.416 --> 02:28:42.939
[UNKNOWN]: You go out there on these trails, and it's only a handful of agents.

02:28:42.959 --> 02:28:50.482
[UNKNOWN]: There's only a certain ones that were competent enough and fit enough or whatever to pass the test, and so it's a tighter community.

02:28:50.842 --> 02:29:00.786
[UNKNOWN]: When you get out on the trail, I don't know where, things suddenly become a lot more conversational between you and the president and so forth.

02:29:00.806 --> 02:29:02.007
[UNKNOWN]: If you were one of his riders,

02:29:03.007 --> 02:29:06.391
[UNKNOWN]: He had a, you know, it was a little more than a business relationship.

02:29:06.451 --> 02:29:11.137
[UNKNOWN]: It was, you know, he knew your name and ask your questions and, and bust, bust your chops.

02:29:11.457 --> 02:29:12.138
[UNKNOWN]: Because that's what he did.

02:29:12.418 --> 02:29:12.559
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:29:13.279 --> 02:29:14.381
[UNKNOWN]: And so yeah, man, one time.

02:29:16.007 --> 02:29:39.135
[UNKNOWN]: uh... and i would teach this to younger agents uh... i was supposed to do the bike advance i was there ahead of time at the same at this court actually the same course for a jacked up my finger this is a couple years later and uh... we had heard a rumor that he wanted to to write on this this one particular loop that he usually didn't take and i i knew all the loops i knew the course i'd done it many times i had time

02:29:40.075 --> 02:29:41.156
[UNKNOWN]: to go check out that loop.

02:29:41.757 --> 02:29:45.079
[UNKNOWN]: But I'm like, I don't remember it, you know, big mistake, just stupid.

02:29:45.840 --> 02:29:48.703
[UNKNOWN]: Anyways, we're riding, we're doing our normal thing, he's taking normal thing.

02:29:48.743 --> 02:29:53.107
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, you know, I forget the number, let's say it was loop 20, I don't know.

02:29:53.947 --> 02:29:55.609
[UNKNOWN]: He says, yeah, I want to do loop 20.

02:29:55.649 --> 02:29:58.091
[UNKNOWN]: I go, okay, check, and so on.

02:29:58.411 --> 02:29:58.852
[UNKNOWN]: I'm leading him.

02:30:00.348 --> 02:30:05.089
[UNKNOWN]: We go to here to here to here to here to my car here loop 20 starts here and he goes I don't I don't think this is Lip 20.

02:30:05.169 --> 02:30:06.990
[UNKNOWN]: I said yes this it's this lip 20.

02:30:07.650 --> 02:30:14.752
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, and so he goes and I'm right behind him because I'm the number I'm the number one guy that day and We start going in he's about two minutes into it.

02:30:14.892 --> 02:30:24.775
[UNKNOWN]: He's like Okay, they're saying loop 20, you know And I'm like yes to this or everyone I would you just you know, I know this course.

02:30:24.835 --> 02:30:25.115
[UNKNOWN]: We're good

02:30:26.401 --> 02:30:27.121
[UNKNOWN]: about two minutes later.

02:30:27.801 --> 02:30:30.102
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, I don't think it should look pretty, you know?

02:30:30.402 --> 02:30:31.123
[UNKNOWN]: You sound just like that.

02:30:31.143 --> 02:30:38.565
[UNKNOWN]: And now I'm getting a little annoyed, actually, if I'm being honest, and I'm gonna roll my eyes and I'm like, dude, it's sleep 20, you know?

02:30:39.185 --> 02:30:45.708
[UNKNOWN]: Mike, about a minute goes by and we're passing something and it clicks, we're not on the flip point.

02:30:45.748 --> 02:30:49.709
[UNKNOWN]: Now I realize that I'm wrong, and I've been insisting that we're right.

02:30:51.048 --> 02:31:05.524
[UNKNOWN]: And so I'm on the radio, and I'm calling the other assets that are in the area, and I'm telling him, hey, I said we were here, we're here, you know, they're in their repositioning, I've made that notification, they're repositioning where they need to be, but I haven't told him yet, and about two minutes later.

02:31:07.397 --> 02:31:28.511
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, he has the most epic crash I have ever seen him have like like I said if you're not trying hard You're not you're you're if you're not crashing you're not trying hard and he just has an epic crash I mean it was there's the baddest one that I ever witnessed and I'm just like my first thought was oh wow Yeah, he's dead and it's my fault And we we disinfect man.

02:31:28.531 --> 02:31:29.211
[UNKNOWN]: We throw him down.

02:31:29.231 --> 02:31:30.472
[UNKNOWN]: I walk up to him.

02:31:30.492 --> 02:31:31.393
[UNKNOWN]: I can see him breathing.

02:31:31.413 --> 02:31:35.996
[UNKNOWN]: He's on his back And his eyes are open and I'm just like sir

02:31:37.108 --> 02:31:37.620
[UNKNOWN]: You okay?

02:31:38.692 --> 02:31:40.132
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, I'm going to need a minute.

02:31:40.552 --> 02:31:43.473
[UNKNOWN]: You know, he's just like, look, it's straight up.

02:31:43.573 --> 02:31:46.034
[UNKNOWN]: And it's apparent that he's fine.

02:31:46.694 --> 02:31:47.754
[UNKNOWN]: He's just going to need a minute.

02:31:47.914 --> 02:31:54.656
[UNKNOWN]: And I was, I just look up and I saw this other writer who I knew it was an EMT and I might thank God you're here because now you're an EMT, you can actually assess.

02:31:55.416 --> 02:31:58.677
[UNKNOWN]: And nothing was wrong, nothing was, he had this cut.

02:31:59.017 --> 02:32:01.357
[UNKNOWN]: It's cut here, it's bleeding, which he thought was cool.

02:32:01.637 --> 02:32:02.838
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, you made him look tough.

02:32:03.078 --> 02:32:05.518
[UNKNOWN]: He's asking us to take a picture of him, so he can send it to his wife.

02:32:09.099 --> 02:32:16.845
[UNKNOWN]: And then, yeah, yeah, I later talked to one of his staff members and they're like, yeah, he's pretty sure you had him on the wrong trail and I'm like, don't tell him but he's right.

02:32:18.886 --> 02:32:19.586
[UNKNOWN]: I want to trip.

02:32:19.947 --> 02:32:20.147
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:32:20.867 --> 02:32:21.268
[UNKNOWN]: I'm curious.

02:32:21.288 --> 02:32:25.791
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, in that environment, I mean, that's presidential details are tough to begin with.

02:32:25.891 --> 02:32:28.392
[UNKNOWN]: Obviously, he's a former president, which...

02:32:29.753 --> 02:32:40.538
[UNKNOWN]: Obviously, that's not as kind of high stress as a current president, but as a bike rider in that environment.

02:32:40.638 --> 02:32:42.779
[UNKNOWN]: Are you carrying just your pistol?

02:32:43.060 --> 02:32:43.860
[UNKNOWN]: Just a cigarette?

02:32:44.805 --> 02:33:01.483
[UNKNOWN]: I mean you're trying to be as Spartan as you can right with you with your gear you don't want to overdo it but yeah I mean you're not going in the woods on our own yeah I mean you got you got your handgun you got your radio which is wild because I'm left handed to my six on my left side and my radio is on my right side no matter which way you fall when you crash off a bike.

02:33:01.883 --> 02:33:17.733
[UNKNOWN]: You're going to hit one of them and it hurts extra when you've got a big old piece of metal sticking in you And then you know, maybe some other and we got little mini packs on us as well So and you've got you know first take gear there and and some other subliminal gear that'll be helpful But it's not a full.

02:33:18.013 --> 02:33:18.674
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, by coming.

02:33:18.714 --> 02:33:19.834
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, no body armor.

02:33:20.095 --> 02:33:20.155
[UNKNOWN]: Oh

02:33:20.895 --> 02:33:34.684
[UNKNOWN]: Oh man, some guys that were known to do it, I couldn't do it, I mean it's yes, just the heat alone in Texas Yeah, maybe you can't say, but I mean typically how many guys are riding with them?

02:33:35.512 --> 02:33:39.833
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I can't say specifically, but it's a good handful.

02:33:40.273 --> 02:33:44.214
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you're not, you know, sometimes he would have friends with them and stuff like that.

02:33:44.394 --> 02:33:53.696
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know to what extent he rides anymore, but if it's a smaller group of us, so you had to make sure the schedulers had to make sure if you were a day shift.

02:33:54.236 --> 02:34:00.297
[UNKNOWN]: And to make sure you had a certain number of bike riders by sort of five guys on each shift because you never knew.

02:34:00.317 --> 02:34:03.718
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, usually we knew ahead of time, but sometimes you'd be like, hey, I want to go ride.

02:34:04.013 --> 02:34:14.715
[UNKNOWN]: And is it something where support vehicle wise like in terms of the route you're picking you can only be so far from support vehicles like is there a protocol like that?

02:34:14.875 --> 02:34:17.176
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, we make sure we make sure we cover everything.

02:34:17.196 --> 02:34:22.697
[UNKNOWN]: Like give something to somebody, did try to attack him and you're bounding through the forest or whatever.

02:34:22.797 --> 02:34:32.519
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and you're vehicle or whatever and sometimes it's an off road vehicle, you're your as close as you possibly can be and all of that stuff is meticulously marked

02:34:33.479 --> 02:34:42.767
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, I'm at, you know, not just, you know, every trail you ride on is, is Mark turned left, turned right, but we have our own additional markings that we have on our own maps.

02:34:42.907 --> 02:34:48.512
[UNKNOWN]: And so when I say we're at, you know, whatever checkpoint or Mark, they know exactly where we are.

02:34:48.673 --> 02:34:50.874
[UNKNOWN]: Except that they're not being on loop 20, right?

02:34:51.515 --> 02:34:54.277
[UNKNOWN]: That's why, you know, that's why I called, I had to call it into them.

02:34:54.618 --> 02:34:55.358
[UNKNOWN]: So we were covered.

02:34:55.739 --> 02:34:59.222
[UNKNOWN]: But man, I wouldn't, I didn't have enough courage at the time to, to tell him.

02:34:59.642 --> 02:35:05.450
[UNKNOWN]: I imagine at this point with phones and air tags and like there's trackers, right?

02:35:06.131 --> 02:35:07.914
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, maybe there was even not.

02:35:07.934 --> 02:35:11.419
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, there's a lot more things that are disposal now that can be leveraged.

02:35:11.579 --> 02:35:12.660
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:35:12.740 --> 02:35:14.523
[UNKNOWN]: Tell me about the guy getting pushed up the hill.

02:35:23.411 --> 02:35:30.016
[UNKNOWN]: One of the high-water marks of my career was participating in the Warrior 100 bike ride.

02:35:31.016 --> 02:35:40.563
[UNKNOWN]: And for your audience that may not know that that's every year, I'm not even sure if they still do it anymore, President Bush would host a 100 kilometer trail ride with wounded warriors.

02:35:41.043 --> 02:35:45.587
[UNKNOWN]: And if my memory, it's usually about 10 to 20 warriors who would ride with him.

02:35:46.367 --> 02:35:47.908
[UNKNOWN]: He would host them for an entire weekend.

02:35:48.168 --> 02:35:52.489
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, there's concerts, there's food, there's trail riding every day, it's an event.

02:35:53.590 --> 02:35:59.092
[UNKNOWN]: And for obvious reasons, Mike, man, that event was really special to me.

02:35:59.832 --> 02:36:02.353
[UNKNOWN]: Just had a, I always had a heart for it.

02:36:04.532 --> 02:36:13.457
[UNKNOWN]: For what I went through, what I experienced, I had an extra measure of adoration for the men and women who chose to go down range afterwards, right?

02:36:14.377 --> 02:36:19.400
[UNKNOWN]: And not only these men and women in this particular event, choose to go down range, they're wounded.

02:36:20.181 --> 02:36:27.365
[UNKNOWN]: And some of them aren't visible, maybe it's a brain injury, but you got a lot of below the knee, amputees with prosthetics.

02:36:28.065 --> 02:36:37.475
[UNKNOWN]: and so forth, you got guys with a kind of a prosthetic arm that has a little claw on it that can actually manipulate the break and stuff on a bike, I mean, impressive, impressive people.

02:36:38.456 --> 02:36:43.462
[UNKNOWN]: And so the second annual where 100 was in Palo Durro Canyon.

02:36:43.482 --> 02:36:44.122
[UNKNOWN]: You ever been out there?

02:36:44.923 --> 02:36:47.325
[UNKNOWN]: You've got it, you've got to go, it's the hidden gem.

02:36:48.406 --> 02:36:49.768
[UNKNOWN]: Paladirakhania is near Amorillo.

02:36:50.148 --> 02:36:52.751
[UNKNOWN]: It's the second largest canyon in the United States, after the Grand Canyon.

02:36:52.891 --> 02:36:53.131
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wow.

02:36:53.471 --> 02:36:59.537
[UNKNOWN]: And it's like, it's Texas, it's flat, it's Amorillo, and then you drive up to it and all of a sudden, the bottom just drops out.

02:36:59.737 --> 02:37:01.259
[UNKNOWN]: And it's just this massive canyon.

02:37:01.619 --> 02:37:05.022
[UNKNOWN]: Well, the event, this 100-kilometer race, going to be the Paladirakhania.

02:37:05.862 --> 02:37:06.322
[UNKNOWN]: I got chosen.

02:37:06.342 --> 02:37:07.423
[UNKNOWN]: It was fortunate to be chosen.

02:37:07.723 --> 02:37:13.467
[UNKNOWN]: I did the lead advance on it, so I went out a couple months ahead of time and collaborated with some local guys out there.

02:37:13.848 --> 02:37:23.794
[UNKNOWN]: This is the, we decided the course we were going to do and then I'm out there a week before and doing it again, you know, reviewing it and this time we took a few other wounded warriors that were going to be with us.

02:37:24.095 --> 02:37:24.715
[UNKNOWN]: They volunteered.

02:37:25.155 --> 02:37:28.818
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, we want to put you on this course and see how you handle it and these guys are.

02:37:30.534 --> 02:37:32.074
[UNKNOWN]: I'm fit at this time, I'm in a good shape.

02:37:32.094 --> 02:37:32.935
[UNKNOWN]: These guys are impressive.

02:37:33.315 --> 02:37:41.257
[UNKNOWN]: I mean at the end one day on the pre-ride, we wrote about six hours, and this one guy, I wish I could remember his name, he was just a stud.

02:37:41.557 --> 02:37:53.059
[UNKNOWN]: He was a below the knee amputee, had a prosthetic on his leg, and he's like, hey, let's ride the switch back up out of the canyon, like the paved road, and it's steep, switch back, and everything else is like, dude, we just wrote for six hours.

02:37:53.519 --> 02:37:55.740
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't know that he was actually just trying to show me,

02:37:56.420 --> 02:37:57.181
[UNKNOWN]: What he was capable of?

02:37:57.441 --> 02:37:58.002
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, yes, sir.

02:37:58.262 --> 02:38:01.265
[UNKNOWN]: He goes cool race to the top and he takes off on my all sweet.

02:38:01.285 --> 02:38:04.749
[UNKNOWN]: I got this guy I mean this guy, you know this guy has one and a half legs.

02:38:05.209 --> 02:38:07.191
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I'm I'm Seeker service guy.

02:38:07.211 --> 02:38:08.953
[UNKNOWN]: I'm fit he's my he smoked me.

02:38:09.173 --> 02:38:14.058
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean just smell that's the level of Just I don't know man.

02:38:14.078 --> 02:38:17.041
[UNKNOWN]: I just I can't speak enough about how how I admire these guys.

02:38:17.081 --> 02:38:17.542
[UNKNOWN]: Well, anyways

02:38:19.170 --> 02:38:26.192
[UNKNOWN]: On this one-port point on the trail, this is really a steep downhill, but there was a turn before the climb.

02:38:26.432 --> 02:38:31.993
[UNKNOWN]: Meaning, you had to kill a lot of speed, you had to break hard, turn, and then climb right away.

02:38:32.633 --> 02:38:39.535
[UNKNOWN]: It's really hard to decelerate, and then get enough power and momentum going forward to get up.

02:38:39.575 --> 02:38:43.416
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, dude, this spot right here is going to be hard for these guys.

02:38:43.576 --> 02:38:45.676
[UNKNOWN]: It's hard for experienced riders like myself.

02:38:49.217 --> 02:38:53.378
[UNKNOWN]: Day one, we ride, and we do that, and President Bush nailed it.

02:38:54.218 --> 02:39:03.280
[UNKNOWN]: Of course, he goes down, he hits it, he goes up, he breaks, he turns hard left, goes up, and he manages to do it, I manage to do it, and the rest, and everything.

02:39:03.380 --> 02:39:14.403
[UNKNOWN]: But the word on the street was a lot of the veterans in the Peloton behind us were not even getting halfway up, and then falling over, and it was kind of a mess, right?

02:39:14.963 --> 02:39:16.083
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, man, we need to change this.

02:39:17.278 --> 02:39:20.020
[UNKNOWN]: And so, but we didn't change, so then day two comes.

02:39:20.720 --> 02:39:23.923
[UNKNOWN]: And this is, man, this is just a moment, bro.

02:39:25.064 --> 02:39:30.107
[UNKNOWN]: Day two comes, in that part, that little part of the trail is on the course for day two as well.

02:39:30.908 --> 02:39:38.733
[UNKNOWN]: And we go down, we barreled down, we're gonna turn left and go straight up, and I'm right behind President Bush, I'm number one, he stops.

02:39:40.194 --> 02:39:42.036
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, this is the worst possible place to stop.

02:39:42.076 --> 02:39:45.158
[UNKNOWN]: Like, we just killed all my men, I'm now we're gonna have to push our bikes up.

02:39:45.378 --> 02:39:45.979
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, are you okay?

02:39:50.861 --> 02:39:55.812
[UNKNOWN]: He pulls over, gets off his bike and says we're going to push these boys up.

02:39:58.959 --> 02:39:59.881
[UNKNOWN]: And it took me a second to

02:40:01.085 --> 02:40:23.659
[UNKNOWN]: figure out what he was talking about until the next event came down and he makes that turn and he's like keep going keep going and he's he's about a third of the way or halfway up and he's about to stop and President Bush running up the hill starts to push this wounded warrior up there so he could stay up until the top yeah that's awesome and I'm like oh well that was awesome and then we did it again

02:40:24.629 --> 02:40:28.951
[UNKNOWN]: And again, and as an agent, you're working, you know, you got a job to do, but I'm like, how can I not help, right?

02:40:28.971 --> 02:40:39.495
[UNKNOWN]: So we would take turns, like, hey, this time you help, like the agent and one of his friends and him literally pushing these veterans up to hell.

02:40:40.295 --> 02:40:42.996
[UNKNOWN]: And so fast forward, the end of the day, we're in the parking lot.

02:40:43.336 --> 02:40:44.477
[UNKNOWN]: The ride is over for the day.

02:40:45.717 --> 02:40:47.678
[UNKNOWN]: And there's this man, this stud.

02:40:48.585 --> 02:40:50.385
[UNKNOWN]: And he was a major, I can't even remember what branch.

02:40:51.646 --> 02:40:54.946
[UNKNOWN]: But he was not a below knee amputee, he was above knee amputee.

02:40:55.706 --> 02:40:57.227
[UNKNOWN]: He did not have much of a leg at all.

02:40:57.887 --> 02:41:02.628
[UNKNOWN]: And so he's literally right, he didn't have a prosthetic that could handle the bike.

02:41:02.868 --> 02:41:05.068
[UNKNOWN]: He's literally riding one leg at night.

02:41:06.588 --> 02:41:08.549
[UNKNOWN]: And he did fine for most of the time.

02:41:09.389 --> 02:41:13.790
[UNKNOWN]: And so this guy's a stud, I can't even say enough, but he's weeping.

02:41:14.330 --> 02:41:14.930
[UNKNOWN]: He's bawling.

02:41:17.336 --> 02:41:19.577
[UNKNOWN]: I go up to, I've had a connection, I've hung out with him a little bit.

02:41:20.638 --> 02:41:23.099
[UNKNOWN]: I won't come and I say, hey man, you're major, you're good, you're okay.

02:41:24.160 --> 02:41:27.642
[UNKNOWN]: And he can't, he can't even come up with words.

02:41:28.722 --> 02:41:30.743
[UNKNOWN]: And so I'm just standing there, I got my hand on the shoulder.

02:41:31.624 --> 02:41:33.485
[UNKNOWN]: I said, everything, like what's wrong with him?

02:41:33.505 --> 02:41:34.385
[UNKNOWN]: You're good, you need help.

02:41:35.446 --> 02:41:36.947
[UNKNOWN]: And he says, I don't think you understand.

02:41:37.687 --> 02:41:39.088
[UNKNOWN]: And I said, you're right, I don't tell me.

02:41:41.469 --> 02:41:44.791
[UNKNOWN]: And he said, my commander-in-chief just pushed me up that hill.

02:41:49.627 --> 02:42:02.791
[UNKNOWN]: He's just weeping, a grown man like as hard as you can find, he's weeping, because his commander and chief that he went down range of the serve just served him in some small way and pushed him up that hill, man, I'll never forget that.

02:42:03.371 --> 02:42:04.652
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's such a cool story.

02:42:05.072 --> 02:42:09.413
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's just what a powerful moment.

02:42:14.377 --> 02:42:20.369
[UNKNOWN]: I guess a bit of a segue, but the secret service has a rescue swimmer program.

02:42:21.957 --> 02:42:24.539
[UNKNOWN]: I was unaware that they even had a rescue swimmer program.

02:42:24.559 --> 02:42:26.160
[UNKNOWN]: I think most people probably are.

02:42:26.720 --> 02:42:29.482
[UNKNOWN]: You did that for 15 years of your career.

02:42:30.382 --> 02:42:32.303
[UNKNOWN]: Tell us about the secret service rescue swimmers.

02:42:32.744 --> 02:42:33.164
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, man.

02:42:33.424 --> 02:42:34.385
[UNKNOWN]: And why do they have them?

02:42:34.485 --> 02:42:34.805
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:42:35.125 --> 02:42:37.847
[UNKNOWN]: So the mission is, it's a rescue element.

02:42:37.887 --> 02:42:38.987
[UNKNOWN]: It's not a combat element.

02:42:39.047 --> 02:42:40.969
[UNKNOWN]: It's not a tactical element at all.

02:42:41.509 --> 02:42:42.930
[UNKNOWN]: It's purely a rescue function.

02:42:43.210 --> 02:42:50.995
[UNKNOWN]: Whenever we found the need and I believe this started during Old Man Bush, so Bush 41 days, big voter, big outdoors men and so forth.

02:42:52.156 --> 02:42:55.579
[UNKNOWN]: There was a need for, hey, when he goes on a boat, what if something goes wrong, right?

02:42:55.840 --> 02:42:59.404
[UNKNOWN]: And so they developed this program over years and it's evolved into several iterations.

02:42:59.764 --> 02:43:01.786
[UNKNOWN]: But what it is and its essence is,

02:43:03.122 --> 02:43:07.407
[UNKNOWN]: When a very secret surface protector goes out on the water, there's a rescue element involved.

02:43:07.728 --> 02:43:11.552
[UNKNOWN]: That's separate from the tactical or the shift element, the protective element.

02:43:12.193 --> 02:43:21.544
[UNKNOWN]: And there's sole primary job is if something goes boom or bang or the boat cracks in half on a rock or whatever and people are overboard, you go into rescue mode.

02:43:22.625 --> 02:43:31.936
[UNKNOWN]: And so, gosh, I don't know what the current count is, you know, I think we're about current count of agents, it's about 3,500 agents, 3,700 agents, right in that range.

02:43:32.536 --> 02:43:37.682
[UNKNOWN]: Typically on a rescue swimmer, there's like 30 to 40 active rescue swimmer's in the entire service.

02:43:37.963 --> 02:43:39.845
[UNKNOWN]: So it's a very tight group, small group.

02:43:40.305 --> 02:43:41.206
[UNKNOWN]: And guys coming in and out.

02:43:42.007 --> 02:43:45.569
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, what I did, I remember, I was able to remain an active summer 15 years.

02:43:45.589 --> 02:43:46.270
[UNKNOWN]: That's very unusual.

02:43:46.970 --> 02:43:50.532
[UNKNOWN]: Um, most guys are in it while they're during their detail time for that 5 or 6 years.

02:43:50.892 --> 02:43:52.053
[UNKNOWN]: And then they go on and do other things.

02:43:52.193 --> 02:43:54.214
[UNKNOWN]: I just love the mission so much.

02:43:54.715 --> 02:43:55.835
[UNKNOWN]: I want to do as long as I could.

02:43:55.875 --> 02:44:00.558
[UNKNOWN]: So I became certified swimmer when I showed up on the bush detail in 09.

02:44:00.958 --> 02:44:01.439
[UNKNOWN]: I raised my hand.

02:44:01.459 --> 02:44:02.219
[UNKNOWN]: I said, I want to be a biker.

02:44:02.860 --> 02:44:03.780
[UNKNOWN]: I want to be rescued swimmer.

02:44:04.180 --> 02:44:04.961
[UNKNOWN]: And they're like sweet.

02:44:04.981 --> 02:44:06.081
[UNKNOWN]: We don't have a rescue swimmer.

02:44:06.101 --> 02:44:06.742
[UNKNOWN]: That'd be awesome.

02:44:07.482 --> 02:44:09.323
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, because we don't like borrowing from other details.

02:44:09.363 --> 02:44:10.224
[UNKNOWN]: We like her own guys, right?

02:44:11.449 --> 02:44:27.484
[UNKNOWN]: another guy comes in he was already arrested from her so i passed the course and so now we've got we've got two and so yet they sent me to training in uh... in twenty ten uh... and that was uh... man it's that there's a motto you know given uh... uh... everything's earned not given

02:44:28.706 --> 02:44:43.255
[UNKNOWN]: Man, it was, I know I'm sitting across from from a former seal and it ain't buds and anything I'm not saying it is and it's not like the the co-scard rescue swimmer A school which is at Billy 16 weeks, this was four weeks.

02:44:44.548 --> 02:44:49.670
[UNKNOWN]: but a lot of that was condensed and it's, I mean for me it's the hardest thing physically I've ever done.

02:44:49.890 --> 02:44:50.210
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wow.

02:44:50.510 --> 02:44:50.690
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:44:51.170 --> 02:44:52.310
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not saying quite a bit.

02:44:52.611 --> 02:44:52.731
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:44:52.751 --> 02:44:56.172
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I mean, and I was, I was confident.

02:44:56.192 --> 02:44:57.292
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, yeah, I can swim.

02:44:58.012 --> 02:44:59.173
[UNKNOWN]: I trained a lot for it.

02:44:59.233 --> 02:44:59.853
[UNKNOWN]: I was ready.

02:45:00.793 --> 02:45:04.174
[UNKNOWN]: I trained for it while I was in New York actually, because I knew this was something.

02:45:04.494 --> 02:45:07.055
[UNKNOWN]: The second I got onto a protective detail, I wanted to do this.

02:45:07.955 --> 02:45:12.277
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm out, but I'm 36 years old.

02:45:13.097 --> 02:45:26.891
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know, you think you could go to Buds, your 18, 19, 20 years old, and these Coast Guard guys that we would work with there, you know, like 21 years old, and they're just studs, and so, but at 36, it's one of these things you can probably relate, and I'm not comparing the two at all.

02:45:26.931 --> 02:45:28.052
[UNKNOWN]: Like, I tell people, look.

02:45:29.495 --> 02:45:32.656
[UNKNOWN]: Um, Coast Guard Rescue is one where that's like the major leagues.

02:45:32.676 --> 02:45:35.657
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, Secret Service Rescue is one where it's like high school varsity.

02:45:35.857 --> 02:45:38.637
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, you know, just trying to keep it because that's their everyday job.

02:45:38.657 --> 02:45:42.018
[UNKNOWN]: That's what they do for living, jumping in the high seas and so forth and stuff.

02:45:42.478 --> 02:45:43.799
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, ours was very different for us.

02:45:43.819 --> 02:45:45.799
[UNKNOWN]: It was a, you know, as an ancillary duty.

02:45:45.839 --> 02:45:46.720
[UNKNOWN]: It was a part-time duty.

02:45:46.760 --> 02:45:50.741
[UNKNOWN]: So, but man, four weeks, I mean, two weeks, two weeks essentially in the tank.

02:45:52.661 --> 02:46:16.095
[UNKNOWN]: In the pool, during all kinds of pool comp stuff, and then a week down in North Carolina on the beach, and some rough surf, rippties, and so forth in North Carolina, and then a week of white water training at a white water training facility, because the assignments you would get for these rescue swimmers, I mean, they're, you know, you go out, well, watching on a boat.

02:46:17.017 --> 02:46:22.219
[UNKNOWN]: going fishing or whatever, you're going whitewater rafting down a than a hard river in Colorado or Jackson, Wyoming or something.

02:46:22.739 --> 02:46:24.840
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you never knew what was going to be through our natural.

02:46:25.301 --> 02:46:29.262
[UNKNOWN]: Did in that 15 years fan did you ever do any real world rescues?

02:46:31.603 --> 02:46:32.764
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of cool missions.

02:46:33.644 --> 02:46:35.685
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of cool missions, a lot of really great places.

02:46:36.025 --> 02:46:40.687
[UNKNOWN]: A lot of overtime and so forth, it was a great gig, but it was earned because what you had to pay, right?

02:46:41.707 --> 02:46:42.968
[UNKNOWN]: But never, I mean,

02:46:44.644 --> 02:46:46.227
[UNKNOWN]: There are times where you're useful, for sure.

02:46:46.307 --> 02:46:48.470
[UNKNOWN]: Never like hardcore rescues.

02:46:48.550 --> 02:46:52.296
[UNKNOWN]: One of the worst scenes I was in, I was a rescue swimmer and I was temp.

02:46:52.336 --> 02:46:57.483
[UNKNOWN]: I was being two or three week temp to the George H.W.

02:46:57.503 --> 02:46:58.184
[UNKNOWN]: Bush division, 41.

02:46:59.602 --> 02:47:02.884
[UNKNOWN]: and he was a big voter and that's why the program started.

02:47:03.665 --> 02:47:08.228
[UNKNOWN]: And we were out, I can't remember if we were well watching or well watching or fishing.

02:47:08.528 --> 02:47:09.328
[UNKNOWN]: I think we were fishing.

02:47:09.348 --> 02:47:11.750
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's late in the afternoon and the storm just rolls in.

02:47:12.010 --> 02:47:14.472
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, rolls in really quickly.

02:47:14.532 --> 02:47:15.512
[UNKNOWN]: We didn't worry.

02:47:15.572 --> 02:47:16.933
[UNKNOWN]: We're in Kenny Bunkport, Maine.

02:47:16.973 --> 02:47:17.814
[UNKNOWN]: It's not a whole area.

02:47:18.054 --> 02:47:22.437
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it's rough, jagged, water, super cold, even in August, I mean, come on.

02:47:23.077 --> 02:47:28.521
[UNKNOWN]: And just a big rollers are coming in and it's just, it's getting rough quickly and we quickly realize what we need to,

02:47:28.821 --> 02:47:55.812
[UNKNOWN]: We need to get to port really quickly and swimmers are geared up and we're on a separate boat and we're getting up more than normally we're just walking around with a flower or a kit on minus our mask and the snorkel and fins, you know that's usually in our hand or whatever we were I had the I had the fins on I had the mask on and I'm holding on to the side of our boat rock and I'm just waiting to flip back into the water because it's not going well

02:47:56.752 --> 02:48:13.681
[UNKNOWN]: and the president president 41 was was driving his boat and I mean he's well documented like I think one time up there it was news footage of it he hit a rock or something and and whatever but maybe this was a summer or two later but he's about to get swamped by this swell and we can all see it coming.

02:48:14.661 --> 02:48:19.204
[UNKNOWN]: and he's about to get hit sideways and we're like I feel like I'm, yeah, I'm just about to flop into water.

02:48:19.464 --> 02:48:20.145
[UNKNOWN]: This is not going to go well.

02:48:20.605 --> 02:48:29.331
[UNKNOWN]: And he at the last second, just being the experienced expert boatsmen, anyway at the last second, he powers up and goes right into it and just, you know, rides it really.

02:48:30.031 --> 02:48:33.254
[UNKNOWN]: So that was the closest I came to until we got back to Portman.

02:48:33.294 --> 02:48:34.655
[UNKNOWN]: I thought we were, yeah.

02:48:34.835 --> 02:48:35.475
[UNKNOWN]: I thought we were in it.

02:48:35.635 --> 02:48:35.855
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

02:48:36.876 --> 02:48:37.676
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's wild.

02:48:37.756 --> 02:48:50.800
[UNKNOWN]: And again, it's such a niche, even within the Secret Service, you know, I mean, it's 3500, it's not a huge number to begin with, and, you know, 1% of that is our rescue swimmers.

02:48:50.960 --> 02:48:54.041
[UNKNOWN]: That's such a neat component to it.

02:48:55.021 --> 02:48:59.042
[UNKNOWN]: Obviously, you did that kind of as a collateral duty if you want to call that.

02:48:59.082 --> 02:49:03.683
[UNKNOWN]: But after the Bush Detail, you went to the Dallas Field Office from 2014 all the way through

02:49:07.925 --> 02:49:15.072
[UNKNOWN]: Lots of criminal investigations, I'm curious, kind of walk us through what you did at the Dallas Field Office for that time.

02:49:15.792 --> 02:49:17.514
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know, it was a fun time.

02:49:18.495 --> 02:49:22.838
[UNKNOWN]: Because, you know, there's business decisions, the family's decisions.

02:49:23.759 --> 02:49:33.247
[UNKNOWN]: And at that point, I was facing that decision, and I told my wife, I'm going to be in the business of making family decisions, and we decided not to go seek promotion.

02:49:34.628 --> 02:49:54.537
[UNKNOWN]: to back to New York or any other D.C. primarily we're going to lateral into the Dallas office because my my family is just happy and healthy for sons everything's what we just didn't want to for the family so so I did that and so what that what that allowed me to do is now I dropped back I dropped into that in Seattle role right that I mentioned that we were lacking in New York and my friend

02:49:55.357 --> 02:50:00.484
[UNKNOWN]: I dropped into that role and there was a much at that time across the service and much healthier balance.

02:50:01.225 --> 02:50:06.592
[UNKNOWN]: And so for every two or three young representatives you had one or two experience guys.

02:50:06.632 --> 02:50:10.617
[UNKNOWN]: And so I got to have all kinds of fun dropping back into criminal investigations.

02:50:11.498 --> 02:50:17.444
[UNKNOWN]: But more of them from a mentor standpoint, you know, also the personal life, digging in their personal life and like look, my door is always open.

02:50:17.464 --> 02:50:35.381
[UNKNOWN]: You can come to me Come to me and we'll discuss what it's like to successfully balance this crazy career and keep your marriage intact for example, something like that But you know, so I got back into some counterfeit investigations and old school stuff and also like early in my career, we're dipping into

02:50:36.222 --> 02:51:00.310
[UNKNOWN]: unfortunately like child sex-based crimes and it was an issue that was an overarching issue that drove my heart early in my career was counterterrorism and I got to feed that later man the Lord started working on my heart and and child sex abuse and stuff like that trafficking and stuff kind of grabbed my heart and so I was able to contribute in some small ways some small ways there but I mean I

02:51:01.870 --> 02:51:02.731
[UNKNOWN]: It's a dark place, Mike.

02:51:03.571 --> 02:51:23.789
[UNKNOWN]: I can imagine, I mean, I've had a few guests on that in totally different industries, but have played roles in combating that, whether it's non-profits or even Google employees that manage people who have to scour Google for, you know, CSAM and all that kind of stuff.

02:51:23.829 --> 02:51:24.970
[UNKNOWN]: And it's just, yeah, I mean, I don't

02:51:26.541 --> 02:51:31.512
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know how, how they, and you do it, honestly, I mean, it would be such a difficult job.

02:51:31.532 --> 02:51:32.173
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, obviously.

02:51:32.720 --> 02:51:38.543
[UNKNOWN]: not just somebody has to do it, a lot of people need to do it, but not enough for able to do it.

02:51:39.043 --> 02:51:45.386
[UNKNOWN]: That's if you talk to any law enforcement officer who does it, they're like I need at least 12 more in my department doing this.

02:51:46.326 --> 02:51:49.447
[UNKNOWN]: How does the secret service fit into to that?

02:51:49.467 --> 02:51:58.551
[UNKNOWN]: Is it similar to the joint task force stuff where it's it's a skill set you have and so you're just augmenting either a lower state or even federal law enforcement

02:51:59.872 --> 02:52:10.663
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, a lot of it is task force-based, but then our core criminal investigations per statute that we were able to investigate has evolved over time, and one of them became child-sexy abuse cases.

02:52:11.343 --> 02:52:18.871
[UNKNOWN]: And specifically, C. Sam, like you mentioned, child-sexual abuse material, what would formally be called child pornography and so forth?

02:52:19.251 --> 02:52:20.833
[UNKNOWN]: And so what they found was,

02:52:22.234 --> 02:52:28.136
[UNKNOWN]: Instead of going to state to state, some states hit with a heavy hammer on those type crumbs, some don't.

02:52:28.236 --> 02:52:35.879
[UNKNOWN]: Let's make the federal hammer bigger, and let's employ, let's give more agencies more agents the opportunity to swing that hammer.

02:52:36.520 --> 02:52:46.424
[UNKNOWN]: And so you'll have, sometimes we generate our own cases, but a lot of times, you know, someone from a local police department will come and say, look, I've got X, Y, and Z on this guy, on Johnny Jones.

02:52:47.504 --> 02:52:49.505
[UNKNOWN]: But if I arrest Johnny Jones on the state's attitude,

02:52:50.305 --> 02:52:53.787
[UNKNOWN]: He's going to get three, four years, but the federal statute says 10 years.

02:52:54.308 --> 02:52:56.109
[UNKNOWN]: So can we now work together?

02:52:56.149 --> 02:52:56.769
[UNKNOWN]: Here's my material.

02:52:57.890 --> 02:52:59.251
[UNKNOWN]: Talk to the Assistant U.S. attorney.

02:52:59.591 --> 02:53:00.772
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, let's do that, right?

02:53:01.232 --> 02:53:02.853
[UNKNOWN]: And so you kind of collaborate on that.

02:53:02.873 --> 02:53:04.494
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, but that was it.

02:53:04.875 --> 02:53:08.137
[UNKNOWN]: I dipped my toe into that world, especially early in my career as well.

02:53:08.697 --> 02:53:10.679
[UNKNOWN]: And it was just a place that I knew I couldn't be long-term.

02:53:11.159 --> 02:53:16.262
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I, you sit across from a guy, we, we arrested this guy,

02:53:18.632 --> 02:53:20.074
[UNKNOWN]: We do the search warrant on his home.

02:53:21.256 --> 02:53:27.726
[UNKNOWN]: And he's got an old school camcorder sticking out his window right into the neighbors window.

02:53:29.809 --> 02:53:31.432
[UNKNOWN]: And we already know why we've grabbed this guy.

02:53:31.452 --> 02:53:32.293
[UNKNOWN]: We've grabbed this guy for C-Tam.

02:53:33.580 --> 02:53:41.968
[UNKNOWN]: But now he's got another agent goes next door and introduces and says, second floor, two windows over to the right.

02:53:42.788 --> 02:53:43.369
[UNKNOWN]: What room is that?

02:53:43.569 --> 02:53:45.871
[UNKNOWN]: Well, that's my 13-year-old's bedroom.

02:53:46.572 --> 02:53:52.377
[UNKNOWN]: You know what we found on that all over from that record or something.

02:53:52.737 --> 02:53:54.599
[UNKNOWN]: And that guy, I mean, I'm interrogating him.

02:53:54.639 --> 02:53:57.021
[UNKNOWN]: And you're trying to, as an interrogator,

02:53:57.802 --> 02:54:07.024
[UNKNOWN]: You're trying to minimize, you know, rationalize their behavior, minimize the impact of it, because you're trying to make a scene like this is not a big deal to them, so they confess.

02:54:08.024 --> 02:54:10.805
[UNKNOWN]: But at the same time, you just want to reach across, you know, in strangler.

02:54:11.245 --> 02:54:15.405
[UNKNOWN]: I had to, when he finally confessed to me, I mean, in his shame, he just said, look at me.

02:54:15.866 --> 02:54:16.766
[UNKNOWN]: I looked like a pedophile.

02:54:18.026 --> 02:54:18.846
[UNKNOWN]: And I said, you know what I said?

02:54:19.086 --> 02:54:19.646
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you do.

02:54:20.846 --> 02:54:23.007
[UNKNOWN]: I was so, I mean, another guy.

02:54:24.143 --> 02:54:25.204
[UNKNOWN]: we had him hooked online.

02:54:25.244 --> 02:54:25.784
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't do that.

02:54:25.824 --> 02:54:27.245
[UNKNOWN]: I never did the online stuff.

02:54:27.605 --> 02:54:36.731
[UNKNOWN]: The online, you know, fishing where, you know, you pose as a 13-year-old and these, these grown men, they were not really men.

02:54:36.751 --> 02:54:37.491
[UNKNOWN]: They're boys, right?

02:54:39.512 --> 02:54:42.914
[UNKNOWN]: Making sexual advances for what they think is a 13-year-old and actually it's an undercover, right?

02:54:43.274 --> 02:54:44.075
[UNKNOWN]: We did one of those ops.

02:54:44.695 --> 02:54:48.177
[UNKNOWN]: And I know being a case agent on it, although I wasn't the online persona.

02:54:48.998 --> 02:54:50.339
[UNKNOWN]: And man, I mean, just.

02:54:51.140 --> 02:55:08.252
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, we show up, he shows up at the meat point to me, you know, Jenny, who's 13, air quotes, and boom, we launch on him, and we rest him, and we're, and we, we haven't had time to maranize him, we haven't had time to do a single thing, and we just got cuffs on him.

02:55:08.632 --> 02:55:13.075
[UNKNOWN]: And he says, I don't know what this is about, but I'm not here to have sex with anyone.

02:55:16.830 --> 02:55:17.391
[UNKNOWN]: Good God.

02:55:17.511 --> 02:55:19.352
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm just like, are you kidding me?

02:55:19.792 --> 02:55:23.816
[UNKNOWN]: Well, let me remind you, that's in the legal world, that's called a spontaneous utterance.

02:55:24.116 --> 02:55:24.796
[UNKNOWN]: That's admissible.

02:55:25.057 --> 02:55:28.739
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I'm following the U.S. Attorney later, that evening, you won't believe what he said.

02:55:28.779 --> 02:55:31.682
[UNKNOWN]: And she goes, oh yeah, that's a spontaneous utterance.

02:55:32.022 --> 02:55:36.926
[UNKNOWN]: And so then we get that guy and yeah, and then he's confessing to this and this.

02:55:37.446 --> 02:55:41.590
[UNKNOWN]: And to get that confession, you're like, you know, do not have these same urges.

02:55:41.610 --> 02:55:44.732
[UNKNOWN]: I know how you feel, you know, you're saying things that you, that are so gross.

02:55:46.374 --> 02:55:53.854
[UNKNOWN]: just kind of to ingratiate yourself and to kind of minimize there, but then but you do it because at the end of the day you know you're hitting them with a big hammer.

02:55:54.094 --> 02:55:54.977
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:55:56.398 --> 02:56:23.870
[UNKNOWN]: And I would be so difficult to do that and walk that line, you know, I can imagine why you can't do it for very long, but you mentioned you thought he looked like one, I'm curious, I mean, I know you did the polygraph stuff afterwards, but even as a secret service agent, I feel like you're more in tune with reading body language, just getting the overall kind of, you want to call it a vibe or just the presence of somebody.

02:56:24.750 --> 02:56:41.145
[UNKNOWN]: And all your time in doing the child sex cases, did you find that there was an almost an aura to all of them that like you just like, yeah, I just get this feeling that there's something either off or wrong or evil or whatever?

02:56:41.165 --> 02:56:46.430
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, um, yeah, you know, you don't want to paint with the broad brush, but

02:56:47.945 --> 02:57:00.331
[UNKNOWN]: you get this feeling it's hard to articulate it certainly not something you can articulate in a court of law right hey i stopped him because he just looked like you know but um you know um uh lonely white middle age male

02:57:01.348 --> 02:57:04.689
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it doesn't, never sees a lot of day, always works from home.

02:57:05.249 --> 02:57:21.074
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, that's just, I don't want to paint with a broad brush, but time and time again, you know, it's, you know, never, and usually here's a sad part, very often, you know, their own victim of Trump's interviews.

02:57:21.094 --> 02:57:21.734
[UNKNOWN]: 90% percent.

02:57:21.774 --> 02:57:24.095
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's something crazy what this dad is, and so,

02:57:25.347 --> 02:57:43.560
[UNKNOWN]: you know that that that shaped and formed what they would become unfortunately that that was out of their control but at some point this cycle has to stop and I just think across the board we need more manpower on it it's really sad I know it seems like it's a never ending pile of dirty work that never never get solved

02:57:45.089 --> 02:57:52.155
[UNKNOWN]: I think a big problem is, you know, you mentioned it's four years at the state of the federal level, it's 10 to me, it should be forever.

02:57:53.436 --> 02:57:55.118
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's not a curable thing.

02:57:55.138 --> 02:57:56.719
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

02:57:57.080 --> 02:57:58.661
[UNKNOWN]: If that's a part of who they are,

02:58:00.619 --> 02:58:15.508
[UNKNOWN]: pick a number that amount of years in prison isn't going to fix that, you know, it's not going to solve that to me there's really only one one way to solve that, but so you can only do that for a few years, I can certainly understand.

02:58:18.158 --> 02:58:37.542
[UNKNOWN]: how do you how do you go home and go on after cases like that like with kids and yeah that's something that impacted how you interacted with your kids in terms of trying to warn them or tell them here's how you need to be smart I mean obviously it's for boys not that it doesn't happen to boys but you know I think young men are or

02:58:39.203 --> 02:58:53.513
[UNKNOWN]: I think maybe better equipped, maybe not, you know, I don't know the stats, but I guess I'll stop talking out of my ass now and just ask you, like, how did that change being a dad and how are you going to interact with your kids and try to protect them?

02:58:53.793 --> 02:58:56.255
[UNKNOWN]: I say that I dipped my toe into that world because, um,

02:58:57.417 --> 02:59:00.760
[UNKNOWN]: I knew I couldn't be in that world like full time.

02:59:01.041 --> 02:59:05.145
[UNKNOWN]: I knew that could ever be the primary thrust of my investigations because man's a dark place.

02:59:05.405 --> 02:59:12.212
[UNKNOWN]: And some men and women, and I find a lot of women, female investigators, really good at it and they're able to do it for a really long time.

02:59:13.010 --> 02:59:17.971
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know what the chemical makeup is that makes that person, but it impresses me.

02:59:18.051 --> 02:59:18.911
[UNKNOWN]: I just knew that wouldn't me.

02:59:19.351 --> 02:59:23.712
[UNKNOWN]: I wonder if, I wonder if it's just the purpose they know how impactful it is, not that you don't.

02:59:23.872 --> 02:59:29.833
[UNKNOWN]: But I think, again, it just speaks to the kind of difference biologically between men and women in that way.

02:59:29.853 --> 02:59:30.213
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:59:30.273 --> 02:59:35.614
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe that's what it is, is that it's they know that the impact is worth the sacrifice kind of thing.

02:59:35.774 --> 02:59:36.014
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

02:59:36.194 --> 02:59:36.534
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe.

02:59:36.754 --> 02:59:41.635
[UNKNOWN]: But, you know, in taking that and applying it in the home, like you asked me earlier,

02:59:43.015 --> 02:59:53.665
[UNKNOWN]: Man, I've got four signs ages right now, they're 20 to 13, and I just, I don't tell them the details of that, but I tell them they evil exist.

02:59:55.025 --> 02:59:57.687
[UNKNOWN]: And if you don't think it does, you need to get your head out of your butt.

02:59:58.268 --> 03:00:00.689
[UNKNOWN]: Evil exists, and evil flourish it.

03:00:00.709 --> 03:00:03.572
[UNKNOWN]: With the old saying, evil flourishes, when good men do nothing, right?

03:00:03.632 --> 03:00:08.856
[UNKNOWN]: And you're a good man, I've trained you, I've raised you up, not to be a nice guy, but a good man.

03:00:09.256 --> 03:00:09.757
[UNKNOWN]: It's a difference.

03:00:10.297 --> 03:00:15.661
[UNKNOWN]: A good man has strength, a good man has, that strength is under control, it's disciplined, and it's applied, but necessary.

03:00:15.921 --> 03:00:17.343
[UNKNOWN]: So I tell him that, and I'm gonna like, look.

03:00:20.685 --> 03:00:30.529
[UNKNOWN]: The girls that you hang out with and that they're your friends and so forth, that you know that you're duty to look out for them to protect them and I I just like take it to the to the next level to give them a duty.

03:00:30.569 --> 03:00:33.471
[UNKNOWN]: I think young young men need need need duty.

03:00:33.991 --> 03:00:46.817
[UNKNOWN]: And you know and to this day when my like when my son who's now 18 you know he was 16 17 or he's going out with his his girlfriend to a concert I would

03:00:47.677 --> 03:00:49.799
[UNKNOWN]: I tell them, look sideways before you left.

03:00:50.219 --> 03:00:55.623
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, I know you're not married, but for tonight that she's your responsibility.

03:00:55.803 --> 03:00:56.483
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:00:56.503 --> 03:00:58.144
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I don't swivel be aware of your situation.

03:00:58.625 --> 03:00:58.925
[UNKNOWN]: Yes sir.

03:00:59.065 --> 03:00:59.585
[UNKNOWN]: Got it.

03:01:00.266 --> 03:01:09.172
[UNKNOWN]: So, I would shield them from the details, but I would let them know that man this stuff, this sinister, and he's good men to stand in the gap.

03:01:09.332 --> 03:01:09.492
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:01:10.273 --> 03:01:11.074
[UNKNOWN]: It's a great message.

03:01:11.214 --> 03:01:11.575
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:01:12.436 --> 03:01:19.524
[UNKNOWN]: The last four years of your career, you were a polygraph examiner, which I find super interesting.

03:01:21.837 --> 03:01:31.183
[UNKNOWN]: from an application or applicant screening rather you're essentially catching perspective agents telling lies.

03:01:32.764 --> 03:01:34.865
[UNKNOWN]: Can you tell when somebody is lying to you?

03:01:36.927 --> 03:01:46.573
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know, you get enough training to receive for that, the training center for that is at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

03:01:48.494 --> 03:01:49.414
[UNKNOWN]: Just just awesome.

03:01:49.595 --> 03:01:55.158
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it's about almost four months, I think, away, which was a big sacrifice, but man, the train is amazing.

03:01:55.398 --> 03:02:00.201
[UNKNOWN]: And so, yeah, you come back and you're like, all the sudden you're picking up on cues, picking up on things, and it was terrible.

03:02:02.458 --> 03:02:03.159
[UNKNOWN]: It was terrible.

03:02:03.759 --> 03:02:04.500
[UNKNOWN]: This is what happened.

03:02:04.680 --> 03:02:07.744
[UNKNOWN]: I went to, in early January, 2020, went to school.

03:02:08.725 --> 03:02:14.431
[UNKNOWN]: I graduated mid-March of 2020, right when I graduated and I came home and now I'm ready.

03:02:14.691 --> 03:02:17.774
[UNKNOWN]: I'm a fully trained polygraph examiner, ready to do the Lord's work, right?

03:02:18.515 --> 03:02:21.317
[UNKNOWN]: And it's at the end of March, actually.

03:02:21.718 --> 03:02:23.999
[UNKNOWN]: And the world shut down, COVID, right?

03:02:24.139 --> 03:02:29.543
[UNKNOWN]: COVID locked down, my wife's a nurse, so she's still going to, she's a nurse practitioner.

03:02:29.764 --> 03:02:31.125
[UNKNOWN]: She's going to work, she's doing nothing.

03:02:31.725 --> 03:02:38.850
[UNKNOWN]: They shut down the polygraph program for a short time, because they can't have two dudes, two people in a room, ten by ten room, breathing on each other, right?

03:02:39.451 --> 03:02:40.672
[UNKNOWN]: And the kids are out of school.

03:02:41.012 --> 03:02:41.733
[UNKNOWN]: And so I'm with them every day.

03:02:42.253 --> 03:02:43.394
[UNKNOWN]: And I've got this new set of skills.

03:02:44.898 --> 03:02:46.940
[UNKNOWN]: and it was a Robert De Niro and meet the parents.

03:02:46.960 --> 03:02:48.561
[UNKNOWN]: It was infuriating.

03:02:48.601 --> 03:02:50.043
[UNKNOWN]: Why come so after like day two?

03:02:50.403 --> 03:02:52.104
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm so upset and she's like, what's wrong with you?

03:02:52.124 --> 03:02:53.405
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, our kids are liars, man.

03:02:53.686 --> 03:02:54.506
[UNKNOWN]: They lie all the time.

03:02:55.487 --> 03:02:56.928
[UNKNOWN]: She's like, they do not.

03:02:56.968 --> 03:02:59.130
[UNKNOWN]: And I say, they lie all the time.

03:02:59.511 --> 03:03:01.292
[UNKNOWN]: They do this and this and this and this.

03:03:01.332 --> 03:03:02.393
[UNKNOWN]: And she's like, don't tell me this.

03:03:02.453 --> 03:03:03.194
[UNKNOWN]: I don't want to hear this.

03:03:03.234 --> 03:03:04.235
[UNKNOWN]: I don't want to hear this, you know?

03:03:04.915 --> 03:03:07.177
[UNKNOWN]: And I remember one time I asked my oldest.

03:03:08.258 --> 03:03:10.900
[UNKNOWN]: about, I can't even remember what the issue was, but I was like, are you sure?

03:03:11.180 --> 03:03:12.141
[UNKNOWN]: And I asked him a few other questions.

03:03:12.161 --> 03:03:13.562
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, he, he goes like this.

03:03:13.882 --> 03:03:14.823
[UNKNOWN]: Dad, don't do your thing.

03:03:14.903 --> 03:03:15.804
[UNKNOWN]: Stop doing your thing.

03:03:16.204 --> 03:03:17.085
[UNKNOWN]: Like, don't look at me.

03:03:17.845 --> 03:03:18.986
[UNKNOWN]: It was pretty well.

03:03:19.006 --> 03:03:22.068
[UNKNOWN]: So you can use those, those skills for good and for evil.

03:03:23.349 --> 03:03:27.812
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, in the polygraph suite, you, once you get the experience,

03:03:28.773 --> 03:03:37.459
[UNKNOWN]: You notice when something before the components are ever attached, you notice I'll put a little tick mark by that area that we're discussing.

03:03:37.820 --> 03:03:40.462
[UNKNOWN]: There might be an issue there because they're giving you signs right away.

03:03:40.922 --> 03:03:51.750
[UNKNOWN]: Is it like a quantifiable checklist of here's a handful of things that you can describe or is it more of a feeling?

03:03:52.900 --> 03:03:58.304
[UNKNOWN]: It's more of a feeling, it's more of just nervous, you know, you don't want to overstate body language, but that does play a role.

03:03:58.504 --> 03:04:16.016
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, when I ask you a question, you can say, yes or no, but when I ask you to explain whatever, I mean, you're going to, that nervous energy that when you're being dishonest, you're going to, I'm exaggerating now, but you're going to, it's going to manifest itself in different ways, just like a poker tell, will manifest itself in different ways, right?

03:04:16.556 --> 03:04:27.107
[UNKNOWN]: So you're looking for those things, and sometimes before I've ever attached the components to an applicant, I'm like, that seemed to bother you a little bit there, what's going on in your mind right now?

03:04:27.207 --> 03:04:28.288
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, trust me, be honest with me.

03:04:28.528 --> 03:04:33.573
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and sometimes you're like, well, I'm thinking blah blah blah, and I'll be like, well, that's irrelevant.

03:04:33.593 --> 03:04:34.694
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not even concerned with that.

03:04:35.511 --> 03:04:39.373
[UNKNOWN]: Or sometimes, it's like, well, you know, there was this one time, you know, got that.

03:04:39.413 --> 03:04:47.936
[UNKNOWN]: And so before sometimes, before even attached any components and run the actual test, they're confessing to something that may or may not be disqualifiable.

03:04:48.196 --> 03:04:48.876
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:04:49.156 --> 03:04:58.180
[UNKNOWN]: Is that something where if you between the machine and your experience, like you know, yes, the students for sure lie into me, do you say, I know you're lying to them?

03:04:58.240 --> 03:05:01.461
[UNKNOWN]: Or do you just keep going and let them continue to bury themselves?

03:05:01.796 --> 03:05:03.838
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, you're going to let him dig that hole.

03:05:03.878 --> 03:05:06.221
[UNKNOWN]: It's not going to be like, yeah, I don't think that's true.

03:05:06.261 --> 03:05:09.244
[UNKNOWN]: Until the end, until the time of the closing interview comes around.

03:05:09.264 --> 03:05:09.844
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah.

03:05:10.044 --> 03:05:12.227
[UNKNOWN]: Have you seen the show poker face on Peacock?

03:05:12.487 --> 03:05:12.907
[UNKNOWN]: I have not.

03:05:13.128 --> 03:05:13.768
[UNKNOWN]: You should watch it.

03:05:13.948 --> 03:05:16.011
[UNKNOWN]: OK.

03:05:16.191 --> 03:05:16.891
[UNKNOWN]: It's hilarious.

03:05:17.352 --> 03:05:19.174
[UNKNOWN]: It's actually pretty well done.

03:05:19.234 --> 03:05:20.835
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't anticipate to like it.

03:05:20.875 --> 03:05:21.136
[UNKNOWN]: But it's

03:05:22.517 --> 03:05:43.463
[UNKNOWN]: it's this woman who's a natural lie detector basically like she just has this weird gift okay that she can always tell if somebody is lying like this uncanny ability like she's never run um and so it's like her going through all these experiences you start out like in a casino and gets banned and then they try to hire and then

03:05:44.183 --> 03:05:56.309
[UNKNOWN]: and then she ends up on the road and she's running from the old casino because a bunch of stuff happened and so it's just like everywhere she goes she's like uncovering these things and like solving cases in her skills.

03:05:56.389 --> 03:05:59.691
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but it's pretty creatively written.

03:06:00.251 --> 03:06:02.332
[UNKNOWN]: I'd be curious just as a polygraph exam.

03:06:02.352 --> 03:06:03.853
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you may get a kickback.

03:06:03.873 --> 03:06:09.276
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I detecting Jack Reacher on the, except she's a total like bumbling dits.

03:06:10.016 --> 03:06:11.297
[UNKNOWN]: You know, like she's even better.

03:06:11.357 --> 03:06:12.778
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like she's the opposite of.

03:06:13.879 --> 03:06:17.245
[UNKNOWN]: of Jack Reacher in that way, but yeah, that's funny.

03:06:17.686 --> 03:06:22.054
[UNKNOWN]: What's the the worst lie a secret service applicant has ever told you?

03:06:22.795 --> 03:06:24.058
[UNKNOWN]: Oh gosh.

03:06:26.757 --> 03:06:30.000
[UNKNOWN]: You know, there's seven or eight steps in the process and we're probably like at five or six.

03:06:30.040 --> 03:06:34.765
[UNKNOWN]: So I mean, it's the field has went out down because you can't polygraph everybody.

03:06:35.025 --> 03:06:35.706
[UNKNOWN]: That's went out down.

03:06:35.746 --> 03:06:38.369
[UNKNOWN]: So, but we're like one of the last major hurdles to get over.

03:06:38.389 --> 03:06:44.815
[UNKNOWN]: So it's a role you take very seriously because these people, you know, in six months from now, they're going to be working with you.

03:06:44.875 --> 03:06:46.076
[UNKNOWN]: They're going to be standing shoulder shoulder width.

03:06:46.116 --> 03:06:47.878
[UNKNOWN]: You guys don't polygraph every candidate.

03:06:48.793 --> 03:06:49.635
[UNKNOWN]: not every candidate.

03:06:49.856 --> 03:06:53.204
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, many of them are removed along the way.

03:06:53.545 --> 03:06:55.630
[UNKNOWN]: So it just went those down to the ones that are allowed.

03:06:55.690 --> 03:06:56.693
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

03:06:56.833 --> 03:06:57.054
[UNKNOWN]: So.

03:06:59.272 --> 03:07:26.080
[UNKNOWN]: So, yeah, I mean, there's a reason, I'm just, I'm a huge believer in polygraph as a screening tool, whether it's in the intel community or in the hiring capacity, because all these people, you get a good number of people to come in and check all the right boxes, they present well and all this kind of stuff, and they've got, you know, a skeleton or two that, you know, is this qualifying and you would just think, you know, this, this, this person's all, I mean, I had a guy one time, guy comes in.

03:07:27.320 --> 03:07:33.971
[UNKNOWN]: This is during my training session when I had to do a certain amount of tests with a mentor, right, another examiner.

03:07:35.280 --> 03:07:36.761
[UNKNOWN]: So these are real examinations.

03:07:36.821 --> 03:07:38.041
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, these are real examinations.

03:07:38.081 --> 03:07:40.862
[UNKNOWN]: I just have a wingman here to keep me in line.

03:07:41.383 --> 03:07:42.823
[UNKNOWN]: And do this.

03:07:43.764 --> 03:07:45.585
[UNKNOWN]: I won't say what, it was an army officer.

03:07:45.605 --> 03:07:50.066
[UNKNOWN]: I won't say what you knew it was coming from, but six foot four, two, 50.

03:07:50.947 --> 03:07:52.508
[UNKNOWN]: Just write out a central casting.

03:07:52.528 --> 03:07:53.288
[UNKNOWN]: This guy's awesome.

03:07:53.508 --> 03:07:56.109
[UNKNOWN]: Checks all the leadership things, West Point, home nine yards.

03:07:56.209 --> 03:07:58.150
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, just awesome.

03:07:58.170 --> 03:07:59.170
[UNKNOWN]: And we take a break.

03:07:59.190 --> 03:08:00.951
[UNKNOWN]: We haven't done the new machine yet.

03:08:01.411 --> 03:08:02.632
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, man, this guy's awesome.

03:08:05.477 --> 03:08:07.459
[UNKNOWN]: Don't fall in love with Captain America yet, buddy.

03:08:07.639 --> 03:08:13.364
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, oh, yeah, and he goes, yeah, there's something on the drug issue that's got to me.

03:08:13.584 --> 03:08:17.327
[UNKNOWN]: So he saw something that I didn't, because he's experienced I won, and I'm like, too, you're crazy.

03:08:17.948 --> 03:08:19.669
[UNKNOWN]: No, I've been through training.

03:08:19.709 --> 03:08:20.450
[UNKNOWN]: I know, you know, whatever.

03:08:21.351 --> 03:08:22.912
[UNKNOWN]: Sure enough, man, did the test, and he fails.

03:08:23.312 --> 03:08:24.673
[UNKNOWN]: It fails on that specific issue.

03:08:26.495 --> 03:08:45.453
[UNKNOWN]: have a back and forth conversation with him, awesome dude, and he just ends up confessing to the steroid use because he's playing football and he was smaller and needed to be able to compete at a high level and

03:08:48.035 --> 03:08:51.717
[UNKNOWN]: And so it was terrible because this guy was an awesome applicant.

03:08:51.917 --> 03:08:57.159
[UNKNOWN]: And so I told him later afterwards, like, unofficially, I was like, dude, you know, sit, sit your time in the penalty box.

03:08:57.600 --> 03:08:58.960
[UNKNOWN]: You should have been up front with this.

03:08:59.941 --> 03:09:02.022
[UNKNOWN]: There's a certain amount of time you'd have to wait if you wanted to come back.

03:09:02.902 --> 03:09:07.865
[UNKNOWN]: But be upfront, and that's something that we can mitigate and have a conversation about.

03:09:08.810 --> 03:09:11.993
[UNKNOWN]: But the fact that you were dishonest with me here today, that's a lack of candor you're done.

03:09:12.153 --> 03:09:12.333
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:09:12.593 --> 03:09:13.054
[UNKNOWN]: Unfortunately.

03:09:13.454 --> 03:09:13.834
[UNKNOWN]: But dude.

03:09:14.655 --> 03:09:15.035
[UNKNOWN]: Wing Quink.

03:09:15.056 --> 03:09:16.377
[UNKNOWN]: I'd love to see you back into your three years.

03:09:16.397 --> 03:09:16.817
[UNKNOWN]: You know what I mean?

03:09:16.877 --> 03:09:16.977
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:09:16.997 --> 03:09:17.678
[UNKNOWN]: Because he was a good guy.

03:09:18.198 --> 03:09:19.980
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, so you'd have those things, but man.

03:09:20.620 --> 03:09:21.661
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you would have all kinds of things.

03:09:21.681 --> 03:09:22.622
[UNKNOWN]: You have domestic violence.

03:09:23.242 --> 03:09:27.746
[UNKNOWN]: Was it was an issue that would come up in my, this is what, this is what surprised me going on.

03:09:28.247 --> 03:09:30.429
[UNKNOWN]: Most of my confessions from an applicant.

03:09:31.256 --> 03:09:35.139
[UNKNOWN]: that I got for domestic violence was a female and male.

03:09:35.479 --> 03:09:35.740
[UNKNOWN]: Really?

03:09:35.940 --> 03:09:44.066
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I got a disproportionate number of those incidents where a woman can't a female candidate would fail.

03:09:44.587 --> 03:09:48.470
[UNKNOWN]: And then once we get into it, she's like, yeah, and I'm just abusive to my husband.

03:09:48.570 --> 03:09:50.191
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, that was surprising.

03:09:50.717 --> 03:10:05.332
[UNKNOWN]: I do wonder if maybe the type of female who is applying for a position like that is obviously a sliver subset of the population and it's going to probably misrepresent what that is.

03:10:05.693 --> 03:10:11.239
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, but I mean, you know, the other thing I was surprising was a number of

03:10:13.447 --> 03:10:15.449
[UNKNOWN]: You know, what's the old school word?

03:10:15.469 --> 03:10:19.152
[UNKNOWN]: BC, Alive, or, you know, messing around with animals and stuff?

03:10:19.412 --> 03:10:21.514
[UNKNOWN]: Every now and then, every now and then, you get one of those.

03:10:21.534 --> 03:10:26.478
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, dude, what, what makes you think you were going to get through the screen?

03:10:27.118 --> 03:10:28.820
[UNKNOWN]: You know, because that's a, I shouldn't laugh.

03:10:28.940 --> 03:10:31.642
[UNKNOWN]: That's, that's paying off the charts on that test, right?

03:10:31.682 --> 03:10:32.843
[UNKNOWN]: And like, are you kidding me?

03:10:32.863 --> 03:10:35.645
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, well, you know, it's just something that I do.

03:10:37.228 --> 03:10:42.813
[UNKNOWN]: And so I just, I refuse, I refuse to let my mind go there.

03:10:42.833 --> 03:10:44.854
[UNKNOWN]: There's not a penalty box for that one.

03:10:44.894 --> 03:10:46.336
[UNKNOWN]: No, no, no, you're done.

03:10:46.556 --> 03:10:47.056
[UNKNOWN]: You're done on that.

03:10:47.357 --> 03:10:51.801
[UNKNOWN]: But the worst one, the answer question is a guy who came in.

03:10:54.777 --> 03:10:57.460
[UNKNOWN]: He had, there had already been some red flags.

03:10:57.680 --> 03:10:59.482
[UNKNOWN]: Let's just say that through the hiring process.

03:11:00.823 --> 03:11:05.427
[UNKNOWN]: He was not flying through, with flying colors.

03:11:05.727 --> 03:11:07.029
[UNKNOWN]: There were some red flags, there were some issues.

03:11:07.249 --> 03:11:09.931
[UNKNOWN]: So much of this fact that I was when I was reviewing his files, like,

03:11:10.692 --> 03:11:26.459
[UNKNOWN]: This guy probably didn't even belong this far and I ran it up to my boss and he's like, yeah, you're right This guy's probably not gonna get hired, but let's just run the course Well, if he fails with you whatever, but more than likely he's probably not getting hired, but I'm like, okay, whatever You know, that's fine.

03:11:26.479 --> 03:11:29.400
[UNKNOWN]: It's my job run it run the task man and

03:11:30.930 --> 03:11:34.631
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, he gave me about 15 more red flags just during the interview part, right?

03:11:35.412 --> 03:11:38.833
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy's like, ticks the indicate that he's lying.

03:11:39.073 --> 03:11:44.235
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, just I was in this specific case, I was picking up mental health issues.

03:11:44.315 --> 03:11:44.755
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I got you.

03:11:44.835 --> 03:11:47.196
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, this guy's not something's not real.

03:11:47.296 --> 03:11:52.477
[UNKNOWN]: And here he is applying for a position where he's going to have a load of firearm, potentially next to a prisonized day, it's right.

03:11:52.637 --> 03:11:53.918
[UNKNOWN]: So we take mental health very seriously.

03:11:54.658 --> 03:11:57.580
[UNKNOWN]: And so he's popping off some red flags just in my mind.

03:11:58.061 --> 03:12:01.543
[UNKNOWN]: Anyways, give me the test, fails it, fails it spectacularly.

03:12:01.643 --> 03:12:05.226
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, just, uh, and start in with the interview on him.

03:12:05.246 --> 03:12:06.647
[UNKNOWN]: Because now I want to know why.

03:12:07.308 --> 03:12:08.829
[UNKNOWN]: You lied to me, you know, being honest.

03:12:09.129 --> 03:12:09.329
[UNKNOWN]: Why?

03:12:11.111 --> 03:12:15.714
[UNKNOWN]: And, um, gosh, Mike, a hard, dark conversation.

03:12:16.075 --> 03:12:16.955
[UNKNOWN]: This guy's an applicant.

03:12:17.816 --> 03:12:18.937
[UNKNOWN]: A troubled, troubled young man.

03:12:19.958 --> 03:12:20.358
[UNKNOWN]: And, um,

03:12:22.074 --> 03:12:23.836
[UNKNOWN]: long story short at the end of the day.

03:12:23.896 --> 03:12:27.260
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, yeah, two weeks ago I put a rifle in my mouth and try to kill us.

03:12:27.300 --> 03:12:30.043
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, and it it misfired.

03:12:30.804 --> 03:12:31.024
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.

03:12:33.467 --> 03:12:33.848
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm like.

03:12:35.069 --> 03:12:37.672
[UNKNOWN]: And you think you're going to be, you know, just, I mean, credulous.

03:12:37.692 --> 03:12:38.333
[UNKNOWN]: You think you're going to.

03:12:39.665 --> 03:12:41.646
[UNKNOWN]: You know, you think this is a job for you.

03:12:41.666 --> 03:12:43.146
[UNKNOWN]: This is a good fit for you and that kind of thing.

03:12:43.926 --> 03:12:45.627
[UNKNOWN]: And he just wasn't, right?

03:12:45.667 --> 03:12:54.769
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, so that's just a really good example of this system working where, like I said, that guy wasn't going to make it through anyways, I don't think, I know.

03:12:55.289 --> 03:13:01.731
[UNKNOWN]: But that's why as a screening tool in the applicant process, it's so important.

03:13:02.051 --> 03:13:06.412
[UNKNOWN]: All right, and that's before they would even go to flats that you write that's right.

03:13:06.492 --> 03:13:10.353
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, before before they get a before they get any kind of offer.

03:13:10.533 --> 03:13:11.634
[UNKNOWN]: All right.

03:13:12.854 --> 03:13:18.576
[UNKNOWN]: Were there instances where the machine failed or where the machine indicates they're lying and they're not?

03:13:19.896 --> 03:13:22.437
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know, what is what I say about that?

03:13:22.537 --> 03:13:25.658
[UNKNOWN]: It's an it's an imperfect science applied by imperfect practitioners.

03:13:26.018 --> 03:13:27.898
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so there's like a recipe for failure.

03:13:27.958 --> 03:13:30.339
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so it's it's it's kind of

03:13:31.235 --> 03:13:36.521
[UNKNOWN]: There were times when someone failed, and I would interview them afterwards.

03:13:37.583 --> 03:13:40.005
[UNKNOWN]: And when it was all said, done, I'm like, you know what?

03:13:40.726 --> 03:13:42.809
[UNKNOWN]: They may not, they may not be behind of me.

03:13:45.056 --> 03:13:47.517
[UNKNOWN]: But as the screening tool, I think it's very, very effective.

03:13:47.557 --> 03:13:55.620
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know the, I can't give you a stat on efficacy or whatever, but it just worked so many more times than not.

03:13:56.220 --> 03:13:58.201
[UNKNOWN]: But every now and then I would have that feeling.

03:13:58.241 --> 03:13:59.042
[UNKNOWN]: And you never know for sure.

03:13:59.762 --> 03:14:03.523
[UNKNOWN]: If I feel like that person's walking out of the door, very disappointed, you know what?

03:14:03.863 --> 03:14:05.164
[UNKNOWN]: They may be being honest with me.

03:14:05.464 --> 03:14:10.167
[UNKNOWN]: So if they fail machine-wise doesn't matter either way they're out.

03:14:10.647 --> 03:14:11.868
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, they're out of the process.

03:14:12.448 --> 03:14:13.729
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:14:14.609 --> 03:14:16.030
[UNKNOWN]: And this has evolved over the years.

03:14:16.050 --> 03:14:19.012
[UNKNOWN]: For us, at least, there may be a time when they can come back in.

03:14:19.692 --> 03:14:22.154
[UNKNOWN]: And there may be like a process or something like that.

03:14:22.174 --> 03:14:24.915
[UNKNOWN]: But it's, yeah, you have to wait a certain amount of time or something like that.

03:14:24.935 --> 03:14:27.096
[UNKNOWN]: But sometimes, I don't know where they stand right now.

03:14:27.116 --> 03:14:28.977
[UNKNOWN]: I've been out of the program for almost two years now.

03:14:29.098 --> 03:14:30.578
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:14:37.658 --> 03:14:38.539
[UNKNOWN]: it was time man.

03:14:40.501 --> 03:14:48.429
[UNKNOWN]: I knew in the five years or so after 9-11, I thought about quitting the Secret Service every day.

03:14:49.671 --> 03:14:55.217
[UNKNOWN]: I knew that I was spared, 3,000 other people weren't.

03:14:56.572 --> 03:14:57.393
[UNKNOWN]: and I wanted to know why.

03:14:57.973 --> 03:15:01.796
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't feel like I was entitled to the answer of, you know, why they were not spared?

03:15:02.696 --> 03:15:06.279
[UNKNOWN]: Because that's just so above me, I can't, I can't fathom that.

03:15:06.639 --> 03:15:08.420
[UNKNOWN]: But I did want, spiritually.

03:15:09.673 --> 03:15:10.554
[UNKNOWN]: in prayer and so forth.

03:15:10.574 --> 03:15:11.935
[UNKNOWN]: I wanted to know, okay, what's my mission?

03:15:14.056 --> 03:15:15.777
[UNKNOWN]: I should have, I should have died at least three times.

03:15:16.278 --> 03:15:16.618
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't.

03:15:16.718 --> 03:15:18.279
[UNKNOWN]: You must have a plan for me, purpose for me.

03:15:18.720 --> 03:15:19.080
[UNKNOWN]: What is it?

03:15:19.580 --> 03:15:22.022
[UNKNOWN]: And so, and I just wasn't getting anything in return.

03:15:22.042 --> 03:15:23.563
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I entered this season.

03:15:23.903 --> 03:15:30.128
[UNKNOWN]: I called it kind of call it the season in the woods, or I was spiritually very frustrated because I just, I knew that I was spared for a reason.

03:15:30.148 --> 03:15:34.451
[UNKNOWN]: I just wasn't getting anything from God as to what that was about.

03:15:35.112 --> 03:15:36.312
[UNKNOWN]: And so, and then over time,

03:15:37.293 --> 03:15:52.475
[UNKNOWN]: He just started to really put a message on my heart and specifically like for men to reach out to men, military, law enforcement, a Christian man and so forth, I call it a heart for men's ministry, for lack of a better term.

03:15:53.096 --> 03:15:54.257
[UNKNOWN]: I was just like, oh, that's interesting.

03:15:54.277 --> 03:16:03.082
[UNKNOWN]: So I started doing that in my church and volunteer and doing this and that kind of fed my soul and then I had a son and I had a son and I had another son and I was like, okay, I get it.

03:16:03.762 --> 03:16:08.966
[UNKNOWN]: I'm supposed to minister to me and I get a half-four sons and it's still, but during that process.

03:16:08.986 --> 03:16:17.251
[UNKNOWN]: So now I've got wind in my cells, I'm feeling fulfilled, there's joy, there's going to tempt me and all that stuff that comes with kind of living in his will, right?

03:16:18.138 --> 03:16:22.724
[UNKNOWN]: Um, but at no time that I feel called to leave the secret service and to do that full time or something.

03:16:22.764 --> 03:16:24.226
[UNKNOWN]: It's just never felt called.

03:16:24.567 --> 03:16:24.827
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.

03:16:25.107 --> 03:16:25.788
[UNKNOWN]: I'll keep doing this.

03:16:25.808 --> 03:16:29.233
[UNKNOWN]: So I'll keep doing this on the side and this full time agent.

03:16:30.367 --> 03:16:33.209
[UNKNOWN]: And so did that and then that just ride it out from one assignment to the net.

03:16:33.349 --> 03:16:36.310
[UNKNOWN]: Okay, okay, never felt called the leave ended up doing 25 years.

03:16:36.350 --> 03:16:43.354
[UNKNOWN]: But when I hit that mark, I stayed about a year longer than I then required for that retirement and so forth.

03:16:43.914 --> 03:16:45.915
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, it's time to go and it's time to.

03:16:46.376 --> 03:16:54.160
[UNKNOWN]: And so I knew through people in my life that were encouraged me to write this book to share the story to bring when I called light into darkness.

03:16:54.960 --> 03:16:59.701
[UNKNOWN]: to take this awful story situation just for me personally.

03:17:00.181 --> 03:17:02.142
[UNKNOWN]: This is just my experience of what God has done with it.

03:17:02.962 --> 03:17:07.343
[UNKNOWN]: I don't try to make bigger assumptions for everyone else because that's, that's not I can't crack.

03:17:08.843 --> 03:17:17.745
[UNKNOWN]: They started and encouraged me to write this book and so I said, okay, I should do this and I started writing it when I was still an agent on my free time.

03:17:18.445 --> 03:17:20.345
[UNKNOWN]: I think I wrote most of that book during the 2024 campaign.

03:17:23.168 --> 03:17:32.112
[UNKNOWN]: I was launching from Philadelphia doing a Harris rally and now you're on a plane to Arizona to do a Trump rally every time the plane took off I just opened up my laptop and start writing.

03:17:32.613 --> 03:17:38.776
[UNKNOWN]: I think I wrote half of that book on 30,000 feet and you do presidential candidate details during the 24th.

03:17:39.476 --> 03:17:44.297
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't, I was on Jumpteams, so we just jumped in from one rally to the next, didn't matter which candidate it was.

03:17:44.538 --> 03:17:46.618
[UNKNOWN]: I wasn't on a specific candidate, so I make sense.

03:17:46.738 --> 03:17:46.858
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:17:46.878 --> 03:17:49.059
[UNKNOWN]: We're on these Jumpteams, and we're just just launching.

03:17:49.079 --> 03:17:55.321
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, a very active, very busy year, obviously, and kind of like the polygraph mission was...

03:17:56.288 --> 03:18:12.272
[UNKNOWN]: well they would they would get they would get they're they're probably we would like the examiner's we would probably graph like money to say Wednesday and then they'd send us out on Thursday for the weekend you know so they were getting but they were getting their exams done because we had we're trying to hire people and stuff but at the same time that protective mission never goes away so

03:18:12.972 --> 03:18:25.757
[UNKNOWN]: So I was on a road a lot, and I just started taking every, this it could be another lonely night in hotel room where I could binge watch something or whatever or I could actually start riding a thing that I've set up and been right in for a long time.

03:18:26.357 --> 03:18:26.997
[UNKNOWN]: So are knocking it out?

03:18:27.217 --> 03:18:27.398
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:18:27.878 --> 03:18:39.382
[UNKNOWN]: Are there like a handful of telltale physical or nonverbal skills that you came across that most often indicated that somebody was lying to you?

03:18:41.288 --> 03:18:42.529
[UNKNOWN]: I wouldn't say there's telltale.

03:18:42.669 --> 03:18:51.974
[UNKNOWN]: There's like no one or two or three markers that I could look to because at over time when someone's in front of you for several hours, you're figuring out what they're dealing with.

03:18:51.994 --> 03:18:52.794
[UNKNOWN]: What's their tell?

03:18:53.135 --> 03:18:56.016
[UNKNOWN]: I mentioned the poker tell earlier.

03:18:57.157 --> 03:19:01.179
[UNKNOWN]: Whether that's eyes, diverted eyes, down on the left or something like that, when you ask

03:19:03.941 --> 03:19:08.504
[UNKNOWN]: I'm asking where you have to know a question, and this is not, this is not while the components are on to be clear.

03:19:09.425 --> 03:19:13.628
[UNKNOWN]: You have to be asking a question, and you think there might be something there, and like, well, tell me more about that.

03:19:15.569 --> 03:19:22.915
[UNKNOWN]: Well, one of them would be like, well, okay, so I went and you're a criminal, murder case.

03:19:23.655 --> 03:19:24.216
[UNKNOWN]: Tell me about that.

03:19:25.020 --> 03:19:25.600
[UNKNOWN]: you're on the scene.

03:19:25.660 --> 03:19:25.860
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.

03:19:26.321 --> 03:19:33.764
[UNKNOWN]: Well, first someone's so pulled up and then we got out of the car and then you know they're just telling you the events and they're kind of looking at you like this, like I am to hear right now.

03:19:34.664 --> 03:19:36.285
[UNKNOWN]: Well, as opposed to, okay, tell me about that.

03:19:37.446 --> 03:19:37.706
[UNKNOWN]: Well,

03:19:39.420 --> 03:19:40.420
[UNKNOWN]: eyes up, eyebrows up.

03:19:40.661 --> 03:19:41.961
[UNKNOWN]: Now they're creating a story.

03:19:43.102 --> 03:19:43.502
[UNKNOWN]: Typically.

03:19:43.742 --> 03:19:46.303
[UNKNOWN]: Now they're like, okay.

03:19:46.843 --> 03:19:48.184
[UNKNOWN]: First, I got out of car.

03:19:48.504 --> 03:19:51.225
[UNKNOWN]: What I didn't do, I didn't kill anybody.

03:19:51.365 --> 03:19:51.966
[UNKNOWN]: And so that's it.

03:19:52.286 --> 03:19:54.647
[UNKNOWN]: And so then I'm just like, you know, tick.

03:19:54.807 --> 03:19:57.648
[UNKNOWN]: I'm like, okay, revisit that because right now they're creating.

03:19:58.929 --> 03:20:00.990
[UNKNOWN]: So it's more of like a composite of.

03:20:02.866 --> 03:20:07.067
[UNKNOWN]: where certain things fit into what they're telling you and if you see patterns, then it's like...

03:20:07.087 --> 03:20:07.527
[UNKNOWN]: Absolutely.

03:20:08.007 --> 03:20:18.290
[UNKNOWN]: And then whenever they skip time as well, you know, I did this, I did this, and then next thing, you know, like it was over, okay, and I'm just, I'm just marking that, because I'm gonna revisit that.

03:20:18.650 --> 03:20:24.252
[UNKNOWN]: The next thing you know, you just skipped over that, literally skipped over it, you skipped time for a reason.

03:20:24.552 --> 03:20:26.393
[UNKNOWN]: And this happened that happened.

03:20:26.673 --> 03:20:31.194
[UNKNOWN]: There were shots, I mean, the guy had a gun, I took off, basically that's it.

03:20:32.017 --> 03:20:33.518
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, basically that's it.

03:20:33.558 --> 03:20:35.078
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I use that one on my kids all the time.

03:20:35.098 --> 03:20:37.359
[UNKNOWN]: There was like, yeah, it's not.

03:20:37.680 --> 03:20:40.121
[UNKNOWN]: So basically, the next thing you know, or pretty.

03:20:40.421 --> 03:20:44.343
[UNKNOWN]: As an examiner, everyone has their, I don't know, they're different skills and talents.

03:20:44.423 --> 03:20:47.084
[UNKNOWN]: And I got, I got a lot more out of words.

03:20:47.124 --> 03:20:48.485
[UNKNOWN]: I was more into the linguistics.

03:20:48.525 --> 03:20:50.986
[UNKNOWN]: What words did you use as opposed to the body language?

03:20:51.046 --> 03:20:51.606
[UNKNOWN]: And that kind of thing.

03:20:51.786 --> 03:20:55.408
[UNKNOWN]: You can pick up things here and there's body language experts.

03:20:56.408 --> 03:20:57.969
[UNKNOWN]: I think they're really impressive to an extent.

03:20:58.929 --> 03:21:01.911
[UNKNOWN]: For me, it was always the linguistics.

03:21:02.151 --> 03:21:05.433
[UNKNOWN]: What was said and how they were said, and how they said it, you know.

03:21:06.193 --> 03:21:12.896
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm very detailed when I try to speak because I want to really convey, it's just like this thing in my mind, right?

03:21:13.296 --> 03:21:17.859
[UNKNOWN]: But because I'm honed in on that, and I was pretty good at that, pretty good at that.

03:21:17.999 --> 03:21:22.721
[UNKNOWN]: As a criminal investigator, after polygraph school, I was supercharged.

03:21:22.881 --> 03:21:24.902
[UNKNOWN]: It's got to be a nightmare for your kids.

03:21:24.982 --> 03:21:25.502
[UNKNOWN]: It's not fair.

03:21:25.903 --> 03:21:26.503
[UNKNOWN]: It's not fair.

03:21:26.823 --> 03:21:27.844
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:21:27.924 --> 03:21:29.545
[UNKNOWN]: Baring me in a dirty suit.

03:21:30.765 --> 03:21:31.686
[UNKNOWN]: It's a cool title.

03:21:31.826 --> 03:21:33.527
[UNKNOWN]: I'm curious where it is that come from.

03:21:34.047 --> 03:21:35.608
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:21:36.148 --> 03:21:39.010
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I skipped a part earlier when we were talking.

03:21:40.539 --> 03:21:44.984
[UNKNOWN]: And it's the story behind where that comes from, bury me in a dirty suit.

03:21:46.386 --> 03:21:51.952
[UNKNOWN]: If you go back to 9-11, when the four of us got in that car and we drove north to Chelsea Pierce, right?

03:21:52.974 --> 03:21:54.275
[UNKNOWN]: I said we entered that long, large room.

03:21:57.614 --> 03:22:03.262
[UNKNOWN]: You know, over here, we're a large group of agents, and I mean, they look just like we did dirty suits.

03:22:03.342 --> 03:22:11.232
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, just just torn and tattered and beaten and bloodied, and we're kind of like given thumbs up and wings and side hugs and things like that, right?

03:22:12.274 --> 03:22:14.597
[UNKNOWN]: And then my eyes drifted to the other side of the room.

03:22:16.059 --> 03:22:20.223
[UNKNOWN]: And to be candid, I'm just a smaller group of people.

03:22:20.263 --> 03:22:21.405
[UNKNOWN]: People with that new people I work with.

03:22:23.467 --> 03:22:24.328
[UNKNOWN]: And they were different, Mike.

03:22:24.408 --> 03:22:30.395
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, they were, they were clean, you know, suits were perfect.

03:22:30.535 --> 03:22:34.119
[UNKNOWN]: Hair was perfect, shoes were shiny, and it struck me.

03:22:34.760 --> 03:22:34.920
[UNKNOWN]: Like,

03:22:36.450 --> 03:22:41.772
[UNKNOWN]: And they're kind of looking across it as the four of us just walk in and we look like hell, right?

03:22:42.212 --> 03:22:48.714
[UNKNOWN]: They're looking across it as, and I can see I can read their faces, it's like, they're like, where have you been, and I'm thinking, where have you been?

03:22:48.734 --> 03:22:49.154
[UNKNOWN]: Where have you been?

03:22:49.354 --> 03:22:50.154
[UNKNOWN]: Where haven't you been?

03:22:50.614 --> 03:22:51.735
[UNKNOWN]: And let me be real clear.

03:22:52.735 --> 03:22:55.176
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not saying this to disparage anyone.

03:22:55.776 --> 03:22:58.217
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not saying this to bludgeon anyone over there.

03:22:58.297 --> 03:22:58.697
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.

03:22:59.457 --> 03:23:00.958
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know the circumstances they were in.

03:23:01.158 --> 03:23:02.839
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know the choices that they had to make.

03:23:03.360 --> 03:23:08.163
[UNKNOWN]: Some were just outside of the city and actually to make their way back into the city after it all happened.

03:23:09.024 --> 03:23:13.467
[UNKNOWN]: And these people went on to serve their country in great ways.

03:23:14.147 --> 03:23:15.268
[UNKNOWN]: In many ways, better than me.

03:23:16.869 --> 03:23:19.711
[UNKNOWN]: But I could not get that dichotomy out of my mind.

03:23:21.292 --> 03:23:23.654
[UNKNOWN]: Row, there were 30 suits and there were clean suits.

03:23:24.995 --> 03:23:27.276
[UNKNOWN]: And September 12th, but revisit September 12th,

03:23:29.423 --> 03:23:30.964
[UNKNOWN]: I'm on my couch in Hoboken, he's Jersey.

03:23:31.605 --> 03:23:33.286
[UNKNOWN]: It's the morning, my wife says, what do you want to do?

03:23:33.306 --> 03:23:34.167
[UNKNOWN]: You want to turn on the news?

03:23:34.207 --> 03:23:34.407
[UNKNOWN]: Nope.

03:23:35.127 --> 03:23:36.028
[UNKNOWN]: So we're sitting in our praying.

03:23:36.268 --> 03:23:38.630
[UNKNOWN]: My wife and I were praying, we're crying, we're lamenting.

03:23:40.211 --> 03:23:41.753
[UNKNOWN]: Trying to figure out what all this means.

03:23:43.534 --> 03:23:49.478
[UNKNOWN]: And as we're praying, this image was in my mind.

03:23:50.179 --> 03:23:51.380
[UNKNOWN]: Dirty suit, clean suit.

03:23:52.590 --> 03:23:58.553
[UNKNOWN]: And so today, I use it just as an illustration, not to, not to bang anybody over the head, as an illustration.

03:23:58.913 --> 03:24:00.614
[UNKNOWN]: I said, I made a promise in that prayer.

03:24:01.094 --> 03:24:04.335
[UNKNOWN]: I said, Lord, I should have died three times.

03:24:05.416 --> 03:24:05.736
[UNKNOWN]: I get it.

03:24:06.096 --> 03:24:06.596
[UNKNOWN]: I'm listening.

03:24:07.957 --> 03:24:12.539
[UNKNOWN]: But my promise to you is I'm going to spend the rest of my days getting my suit dirty in the name of Jesus.

03:24:15.480 --> 03:24:17.942
[UNKNOWN]: And as we're praying in my wife, it's praying.

03:24:18.282 --> 03:24:19.522
[UNKNOWN]: And then I closed out our prayer.

03:24:19.542 --> 03:24:20.963
[UNKNOWN]: And I just said, Lord, when you call me home,

03:24:22.256 --> 03:24:27.318
[UNKNOWN]: And I punch out of the world, and into the next, bury me in a dirty suit.

03:24:28.338 --> 03:24:30.239
[UNKNOWN]: That's awesome.

03:24:31.739 --> 03:24:33.380
[UNKNOWN]: And that phrase just stuck with me.

03:24:33.720 --> 03:24:39.822
[UNKNOWN]: And I did no idea that 24 years later, it would become a very powerful.

03:24:41.043 --> 03:24:46.645
[UNKNOWN]: Um, title, but more importantly, this is what I speak about all the time, a very powerful metaphor.

03:24:47.226 --> 03:24:47.406
[UNKNOWN]: Right.

03:24:47.586 --> 03:24:50.827
[UNKNOWN]: For, um, don't, don't be a clean suit.

03:24:50.847 --> 03:24:52.988
[UNKNOWN]: Like, like, what do you want your men love legacy?

03:24:53.408 --> 03:24:54.408
[UNKNOWN]: We talk about their legacy.

03:24:54.769 --> 03:24:57.170
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'm, I want to, I want to leave a good legacy.

03:24:57.190 --> 03:25:00.051
[UNKNOWN]: You want to leave a good legacy, and I just tell men all the time.

03:25:00.091 --> 03:25:01.931
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you want to be a clean suit.

03:25:01.951 --> 03:25:05.313
[UNKNOWN]: You want to be known when you're out of here as a clean suit or a dirty suit, man.

03:25:06.372 --> 03:25:09.154
[UNKNOWN]: Um, and then we dig into really what that means to get it ready to.

03:25:09.474 --> 03:25:09.674
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:25:09.754 --> 03:25:09.914
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:25:10.214 --> 03:25:10.595
[UNKNOWN]: I love it.

03:25:11.655 --> 03:25:14.377
[UNKNOWN]: Tell me about the fears and faith.

03:25:14.697 --> 03:25:15.017
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:25:15.037 --> 03:25:16.378
[UNKNOWN]: Stuff that you have going on.

03:25:16.698 --> 03:25:18.979
[UNKNOWN]: So faith is a, is a ministry that I've started.

03:25:19.019 --> 03:25:20.620
[UNKNOWN]: It's kind of half ministry half business.

03:25:21.461 --> 03:25:23.502
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, the business side of it is called fierce comms.

03:25:24.362 --> 03:25:25.003
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, where.

03:25:25.563 --> 03:25:49.325
[UNKNOWN]: This is my second career, you know, I've retired last year from the Secret Service and my second career is not not corporate security, not, you know, internet, threat intrusion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

03:25:49.485 --> 03:25:56.050
[UNKNOWN]: It started with the launch of this book and now it's really a public-speaking public-speaking business last ministry.

03:25:56.611 --> 03:26:08.481
[UNKNOWN]: I speak, I have one foot firmly in the corporate world where I'm talking to corporate audiences, keynote addresses and so forth, that conferences at large company rallies and events and so forth like that.

03:26:09.061 --> 03:26:18.227
[UNKNOWN]: And we're digging into, you know, I'm giving them many times, I'm giving them this 9-11 experience, but I'm talking about what it means to do the next thing as a problem-solving metric, right?

03:26:18.567 --> 03:26:23.670
[UNKNOWN]: I'm talking about the importance of cohesive teams and I'll use that firefighting scene, right?

03:26:24.010 --> 03:26:24.211
[UNKNOWN]: Like...

03:26:25.411 --> 03:26:29.575
[UNKNOWN]: It was Rob's idea, it was John's expertise, it was Frank's leadership, I just held a host.

03:26:30.496 --> 03:26:34.540
[UNKNOWN]: You take any one of us out of that equation and maybe we don't do the good that we did.

03:26:35.080 --> 03:26:41.786
[UNKNOWN]: And so we talked about building cohesive teams, what that looks like, leveraging different skills, talents and abilities that everyone else can.

03:26:41.926 --> 03:26:50.814
[UNKNOWN]: We talked about leadership and the role of humility and leadership, teaching from your scar that I share one secret story, secret story after another, about me coming up short.

03:26:51.495 --> 03:26:54.738
[UNKNOWN]: And then me miss the mark and then me teaching the younger generation of agents.

03:26:55.159 --> 03:27:00.404
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, this is what I'm like, I would bring in agents and I would tell them, hey, you ever hear about that crash the president got in?

03:27:01.685 --> 03:27:03.667
[UNKNOWN]: Where the worst, yeah, that was my fault.

03:27:04.287 --> 03:27:06.169
[UNKNOWN]: And I'll tell him, I'll tell him why was my fault, right?

03:27:06.970 --> 03:27:10.994
[UNKNOWN]: And then, of course, in that corporate setting, I'm still talking about the dirty suit.

03:27:11.394 --> 03:27:12.815
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, what is the, uh,

03:27:14.140 --> 03:27:24.748
[UNKNOWN]: what is, you can, for some people, their passion is a work, and that's mine, for some peace and people, their passion, you know, fuels or funds, their work funds, their passion.

03:27:24.768 --> 03:27:25.909
[UNKNOWN]: Excuse me.

03:27:26.789 --> 03:27:33.034
[UNKNOWN]: I'm just saying, it doesn't have to be either or, they can be an Ann both, and so it doesn't look like outside of the workplace to get your suit dirty.

03:27:33.674 --> 03:27:44.285
[UNKNOWN]: And in the, in the Christian setting man, I speak at men's conferences and men's retreats mixed settings as well, all over the country, I'm zigzagging everywhere and using this.

03:27:45.755 --> 03:27:52.021
[UNKNOWN]: I call this, Mike, this is the Lord, so I'm going to Romans 828 this thing.

03:27:52.421 --> 03:28:01.250
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to take your awful experience on September 11th and Romans 828 says that God works all things to come for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

03:28:01.650 --> 03:28:06.735
[UNKNOWN]: And I love Him and I'm called according to His purpose, so I'm going to take this awful event, I'm going to turn something good out of it.

03:28:06.935 --> 03:28:07.836
[UNKNOWN]: This is what He says, right?

03:28:09.037 --> 03:28:09.658
[UNKNOWN]: So that's what I do.

03:28:11.059 --> 03:28:21.005
[UNKNOWN]: I preach and I teach on these things, these concepts, and I just call people out, you know, to be the man, to be the woman standing in that alley, pointing people to the only light that matters, right?

03:28:21.426 --> 03:28:23.707
[UNKNOWN]: And so when you're giving that message, but you're in that you're in the 911 story.

03:28:25.047 --> 03:28:26.248
[UNKNOWN]: It's very powerful, right?

03:28:26.428 --> 03:28:29.569
[UNKNOWN]: I'm calling people to, what does it look like to have a heart of courage?

03:28:29.589 --> 03:28:38.113
[UNKNOWN]: Like real biblical courage, well, I mean, that's why we're in that, why I'm in that intersection fighting fires is because the Lord had just promised me moment earlier that He is with me.

03:28:38.753 --> 03:28:39.994
[UNKNOWN]: And when He's with me, He gives me strength.

03:28:40.014 --> 03:28:40.754
[UNKNOWN]: He gives me endurance.

03:28:41.054 --> 03:28:42.475
[UNKNOWN]: He gives me perseverance, right?

03:28:43.155 --> 03:28:46.617
[UNKNOWN]: Talking about that, and then, you know, and the Christian setting man, the dirty suit, come on.

03:28:47.237 --> 03:28:48.598
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, there's all kinds of ways.

03:28:48.778 --> 03:28:52.620
[UNKNOWN]: I like to say, look, this world is full of problems.

03:28:53.578 --> 03:28:56.580
[UNKNOWN]: what if you were created to be this solution for at least one?

03:28:56.980 --> 03:28:57.780
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:28:58.460 --> 03:29:05.624
[UNKNOWN]: Like, I just try to motivate and equip the church to go out and be the hands of Jesus.

03:29:06.204 --> 03:29:08.165
[UNKNOWN]: Like, I'm not in the four walls of the church.

03:29:08.706 --> 03:29:09.166
[UNKNOWN]: Go out.

03:29:09.506 --> 03:29:10.627
[UNKNOWN]: Like, there's a rena's out there.

03:29:11.127 --> 03:29:13.308
[UNKNOWN]: There's one societal problem after another.

03:29:13.348 --> 03:29:14.128
[UNKNOWN]: I call those arenas.

03:29:14.649 --> 03:29:16.990
[UNKNOWN]: There's so many rena's out there just waiting for their gladiators show up.

03:29:17.650 --> 03:29:18.771
[UNKNOWN]: And so that's where you get your suit dirty.

03:29:19.472 --> 03:29:25.001
[UNKNOWN]: Like for me, in my second phase of life here, it's like the child sex trafficking.

03:29:25.762 --> 03:29:27.985
[UNKNOWN]: It's just something that just grieves my soul.

03:29:28.005 --> 03:29:29.467
[UNKNOWN]: It's like this spirit with him, he just says this.

03:29:30.749 --> 03:29:32.112
[UNKNOWN]: And I feel kind of equipped.

03:29:33.333 --> 03:29:40.317
[UNKNOWN]: and empowered to maybe from a 25-year career with a certain set of skills, maybe I can use those, leverage those in that fight today.

03:29:40.857 --> 03:29:49.242
[UNKNOWN]: And so I volunteer my time with an organization, and there's another organization I might be partnering with, soon, where that's where I choose to get my suit dirty.

03:29:49.962 --> 03:29:56.806
[UNKNOWN]: And so I just ask people, especially men, call them out of the, out of the, they're not even on the sidelines or in the bleachers, right?

03:29:57.206 --> 03:29:59.528
[UNKNOWN]: Call them off the bleachers, say what moves your soul.

03:30:01.266 --> 03:30:07.111
[UNKNOWN]: What do you see when you're sitting in your car and you say, if you're a believer and you say, God, how can you let dot dot dot happen?

03:30:07.211 --> 03:30:10.213
[UNKNOWN]: Whatever that is, maybe that's the reason he created you.

03:30:10.614 --> 03:30:10.794
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:30:11.274 --> 03:30:13.756
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe and so the whole book is about purpose.

03:30:14.757 --> 03:30:18.600
[UNKNOWN]: You're created on purpose for purpose, in this time, in this place, for a reason.

03:30:20.041 --> 03:30:25.866
[UNKNOWN]: And maybe that's outside and you're supposed to get into one of these arenas and start being the hands and feet.

03:30:25.886 --> 03:30:26.727
[UNKNOWN]: Does that make sense?

03:30:27.451 --> 03:30:29.712
[UNKNOWN]: It sure does, and I would just say amen to that.

03:30:29.952 --> 03:30:30.513
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

03:30:31.293 --> 03:30:33.454
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I'll reference you as DK.

03:30:34.695 --> 03:30:55.307
[UNKNOWN]: Man, what an amazing story, and it's just an honor to be able to sit down and hear you share your experiences in your career, and I do love the kind of force of gunplay, almost nature of just always being in places that are super impactful, like I said, no coincidence, right?

03:30:57.609 --> 03:30:59.330
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for coming and sharing your story.

03:30:59.370 --> 03:31:04.634
[UNKNOWN]: It's been an honor to meet you and sit down with you and I just I can't thank you enough for doing it Well, it's my honor.

03:31:04.994 --> 03:31:05.654
[UNKNOWN]: I've been a fan of you.

03:31:05.694 --> 03:31:09.657
[UNKNOWN]: I love the work that you do As I like to say keep fighting the good fight.

03:31:09.998 --> 03:31:10.598
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, man on that.

03:31:10.638 --> 03:31:10.938
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, sir.

03:31:11.158 --> 03:31:11.318
[UNKNOWN]: Sure.

03:31:11.338 --> 03:31:14.301
[UNKNOWN]: Well To the viewer slash list and I hope you enjoyed it.

03:31:14.401 --> 03:31:17.803
[UNKNOWN]: If you didn't you can choke yourself and until next time this is my job