008 - Retired SAIC, Special Agent Tom Landry

Music. World's premier law enforcement agencies, the United States Secret Service.

I'm your host, retired special agent Jim Holcomb. And if you're ready, grab your go bag and switch your radio to Charlie Coded as we go outside the Secret Service. He is retired special agent in charge of the St. Louis Field Office, Tom Landry. Tom Landry, it is so good to see your face. A little behind the Curtain, Tom and I talk on an almost daily basis. So, you know, this isn't the first time I've seen Tom in or talk to Tom,

well, not even in a day. So anyway, but it's still good to see my friend, Tom Ledry. Excellent. Good morning, Jim. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity, especially on today being July 5th, the 160th birthday of our beloved agency. So thank you very much for that. I love it. I love it. We did a little episode a couple of weeks ago about the history of the service.

And July 5th is, yeah, it's first official date signed on the same day, April 4th, as Lincoln is assassinated, but doesn't become an official agency until July 5th. 160 years old. Doesn't look a day over 159. Exactly. Yeah. Well, aging grace.

Nimble and graceful is always fantastic. And today, for people deciding how far into this episode they want to listen, I think what makes Tom a very unique guest is he was the deputy the special agent in charge of the George Bush detail, GBD as we'll call it, after President Bush had become a former president and was the number two on that detail for almost four years.

And that's unique in and of itself. And then he also was responsible for a program that we call Airspace Security, which I think is really unique and kind of cool to learn about. So with that, let's go in the Wayback Machine. Tom, what inspired you to join the Secret Service? What were you doing before and what made you say, you know what, maybe I'll join the Secret Service?

Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Jim. And, you know, my parents are from the greater Boston area, Winthrop, a little town called Winthrop, Massachusetts, a great, beautiful place. And so growing up, I got a heavy dose of Kennedy era politics and Kennedy era love, right? They were very, very big fans of the Kennedys and in their politics, in fact. And so today we call them Republicans, but back then, they were Democrats. And so my mom, a big, big lover of history.

And so the Kennedy assassination was an interesting point of emphasis for my mom growing up because she was such a big moment in history for them, for the whole country, of course. But it really hit home for them. And I distinctly remember being a child visiting Winthrop and having books and magazines and just talking to my grandfather about the Kennedy assassination. We'd go to the Kennedy Museum, the Kennedy Prison Library there.

And so, you know, without knowing who Clint Hill was, right, I knew who Clint Hill was, right? You know, so we saw those iconic images so many times. I saw them so many times as a kid growing up. And it really resonated with me. It really stuck with me. I know some of your other guests have said that, too. So, I mean, no surprise, the importance of that event in my interest in history and my interest in the Secret Service.

Of course, it was a little bit of a long and windy road to get to the agency, as it is for most of us, right? It's not usually a clear path. Born in Philadelphia, of course, Tom Landry in Philadelphia, it went over poorly. So, you know, you know, and I'll make you tell the story later, but Tom Landry for the younger audience, there used to be a head football coach in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys named Tom Landry.

And so Tom, my friend and guest here, had the nickname early on in his career as coach. But you can imagine a kid growing up in Philly with the name Tom Landry probably received numerous beatings on a weekly basis from his Eagle loving peers. Yeah, that's hilarious, man. Thankfully, the Philadelphia Eagle fans are easygoing and, you know, very relaxed, very still fan base. They are not rabid or passionate or violent at all. I think they have a jail in their stadium in a holding cell.

At least in the old jail, or the old stadium, they had a holding cell. That's a stadium, of course, yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah, so born in Philly, of course, my parents moved to Columbus, Ohio, a little place called Dublin, Ohio, when I was a sophomore in high school, painful move, frankly, right at that timeframe. And so that, that drove a lot of the decision-making for my wife and I on, on the career choices.

You know, we made a decision, Hey, we're, we're not moving the family after a certain point, you know, and we'll get to it later on. When I went to St. Louis, the family stayed back in Dallas a little bit, just for that reason. We didn't too, I distinctly remember it being tough. So, so again, I went to Miami of Ohio undergrad, Northeastern in Boston, right back to the hometown of Boston there, or my second hometown, I guess.

And I went and got a master's degree in criminal justice, and there was a recruiting event, and there was the U.S. Border Patrol. So obviously in the news quite a bit these days, but back in 96, 97, very few people really knew what the Border Patrol was. The Jack Nicholson movie came out in 82, 83, and so we kind of knew that. But my parents had no idea what it was. Like, we patrolled the border? And frankly, I didn't either, frankly. I didn't know much about it.

But they came in to the recruiting event, they said, We're going to teach you some Spanish. We're going to give you a slice of the American border. And you're going to be on your own, right? And, you know, you're going to be out there. And that really appealed to me a lot, frankly. And they meant the Canadian border, right? Yeah, right. No, I guess. Yeah, my language skills would have been better up there. Landry, French, Canadian background.

But, yeah, no, unfortunately not. Or fortunately, it turned out to be great. But, yeah, I've planted them. They stationed me in El Centro, California. So for your listeners, you know, please go to a map. You know, El Centro now, of course, is in the news all the time because they control the Border Patrol operation toward the state of California, if I'm not mistaken. So you're seeing them on the news quite a bit. And so obviously, you know, a big shout out to the men and women in green.

They're doing a very difficult, challenging job. Yeah, man. Six aside, let's, you know, I'm not going to get into the politics of it, but they're executing the mission that their leadership has authorized them to do. And so it's not easy.

So, you know. Well, yeah. And the big green machine, man, is long, I think, underappreciated by some segments in our society. And I don't know why it would be political for law enforcement agencies to enforce the law. Yeah. If people don't like the law, there's a process to change the law. Yeah. There's no new immigration laws passed. These are laws that have been on the books forever. And, you know, Border Search Authority has been on the books for a long, long time, and it's not new.

And if we're cool with people just not, you know, following the law, I'd love to know which laws I'm, you know, free to ignore. There's several that I find unfair, but I know that I'll be held accountable to them. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So down in El Centro for three years, you said? Yeah, about three years. All my best bar stories are from those three years. That's wild. A lot of living in that time frame there.

And, you know, now, of course, in post-9-11 era, Border Patrol, you know, the whole DHS system has changed dramatically. And one of them is funding for our border safety initiatives that have been largely ignored for decades, right? You know, when I say that it was it was me in a 404 Bronco and for for seven or eight miles of of linear border, that's that was very standard for us staffing wise there. And so, you know, I really loved it because you got a lot of experience in a very short time.

And, you know, you learned what things you can handle, what things you need to pull back. And, you know, for a young man that's a young, a young age and young in their career, that's that's hard to do, but really, really important. Right. Yeah. So. And her Border Patrol is 1811? No, they're a different GS classification, but they're not. But they're called agents. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. More agents.

Yeah, exactly. So paramilitary academy, a difficult academy, I would say compared to the ones I've gone through, you know, a lot of, a lot of former military folks, you know, such as yourself out of the armed forces and then coming to the board patrol as a career. So I had a lot of good mentors that were a little bit older than me and, and a little wiser, let's face it. You know, I mean, you know, you know, master's degree means nothing right on the border, of course. Right. Which is important.

Those life skills are critical. And so learned a ton there, got stationed and partnered on an ATV drug interdiction unit with a gentleman whose father was in the Secret Service. Oh. And so I was looking at other opportunities. I had a couple I had a couple of good drug seizures. And so I was looking at the DEA, our friends at the DEA there. And so applying with them and moving through the process there.

And I got to meet this gentleman who introduced me to his dad and his dad kind of kind of walked me through the path of the Secret Service. And so that kind of came back full circle. And there it was. And so it took a couple of years to come on board, like most folks in our generation. You know, this is pre-USA jobs. This is pre, you know, this is pre-everything, right? Yeah. This is a typewriter for your listeners at home. They're like,

what the hell? What is he talking about? Yeah, you're typing up your application. You're carrying it to the office. Yeah. Yeah. which I find out afterwards is part of the interview application. Yeah, for sure. Hey, can you complete paperwork? And then when you show up, you find out when other people come and do the same thing, the boss asks, what was he wearing when he came and dropped off his application? Yeah, yeah. Shorts and flip-flops? Or, hey, did he come dressed like a professional,

like he wants to work at this place? Yeah. I think that's important. Hey, the service culture can be very buttoned up, and they want to know if they're going to be a good culture fit, and they can tell that by the way you show up. Hey, did you have to call anybody and ask, how do I get to your office? Or did you just solve that, figure it out yourself? Yeah, so true. And, you know, I don't know if you want to talk about some Border Patrol stories, but some of them are great.

But I will tell you that I interviewed through the San Diego office, you know, which is several hours away from El Centro. And for those of you that have never been, I don't know if the office has moved or not. But when I was there, it was in the Marina area. It was stunning. Oh, that's awesome. It was beautiful, right? And I'm like, I'm like, this is, I was just blown away with everything. It was fantastic. Now I'm in El Centro and it's, it's a pretty tough environment out there.

So I come into the big city of San Diego. And you're thinking of your cinder block hut of a, of an office and you walk into all this opulence that is San Diego field office. It's like in a beautiful area in San Diego. And I'm like, oh, this is fantastic. And then we can talk about when I got my first duty station about the start difference between San Diego. And no disrespect to Motown and Detroit, we love. It's a very, very central part of my heart.

But the office locations are a little bit different. A little bit less desirable. It's a little bit different. So let's not speed too fast away from the Border Patrol. And again, hey, it's all in the news. What would... Shock people to learn about the border and maybe the crime that you see, the human smuggling, the narcotics. I think there's people put themselves in one of two camps like, no, hey, everybody that comes across the border is just a hardworking person looking for an opportunity.

And then there's another side to say, everybody that comes over is a criminal. And I'm sure the truth is probably somewhere in between. Right. I just two or three just general comments there is number one, you know, 99% of the individuals I encountered were just trying to get a better economic foothold in life, right?

I would think that if you or I were born several hundred miles south of where we were born, we might be trying to do the same thing for economic benefit, you know, you know, the draw is there. Sure. Yeah, exactly. From an economic perspective, they when I gave instructions, orders, commands, whatever it may be. They followed them. They were, this was, you know, they were, they were in general compliant, just trying to get a better job.

Right. And so, and so I definitely empathized with the great majority. Now that's not everybody. And it's my understanding that the dynamic and the percentages of, of, of really truly bad actors is, has increased exponentially over the years. The second point I make is the sheer volume So what we're talking about here shocked me. I'm from Ohio, Pennsylvania, whatever.

Of course, you hear about this, but it was not unheard of to catch groups of 20 to 100 individuals in the desert crossing at night. And not by yourself, but by yourself initially, and then, of course, having resources come to help you with that. But the sheer volume was what certainly took me back quite a bit, right?

And then the second thing is, you know, the narcotics smuggling that would happen and the human smuggling that would happen, the economics of it, I didn't fully understand until I got there and saw, you know, how grave it was, right? So, you know, there's a lot of money to be made. And again, I'm not a border expert. So, again, I'm out of the game for a long, long time. So I do want to just, you know, preface that. This is the podcast. It's the equivalent of like talk radio.

You don't have to be an expert to have a very strong, unfounded opinion. That's true. It doesn't stop other people. I should go on television then. Exactly so. Yeah. So, so the volume really kind of took me aback. Like I was like, wow, like, yeah, this is, you know, uh, and then of course the third thing is, is the, is the level of sophistication in the smuggling networks that went along.

Right. So I'm certainly not going to say, you know, that our, our partners to the South were involved in some levels, but I saw lots and lots of narcotics that had the stamp of the Mexican military on there. And so, you know, it was, you always were a little cautious of who your friends really are. And, you know, certainly it's something I wasn't prepared for, right?

It wasn't something you think about, but, you know, ultimately you're out there by yourself and you got to really think about what you can handle, what you can't handle. You know, certainly it was a couple, a couple of situations I found myself in where, you know, you know, I was very lucky not to have something bad happen because I wasn't as aware as I should have been. And, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a multi-billion dollar operation you're

stepping into and getting in the way, right? And so you got to be careful. God bless, man. So now, of course, now I have a gentleman that I was in the Border Patrol with in El Centro. He's now the agent in charge of the El Centro District. And he's fantastic. He's a fantastic agent then. He appeared to be a fantastic leader now. And I know morale is very high.

And so totally different game from 1997 to 2025. Yeah, the game has changed. And yeah, the situation at the border has changed dramatically, as you noted. I love the Border Patrol's social media. I want whoever does their social media to do social media for my life. And just the hype videos in there, hilarious. In the Border Patrol, so everybody goes to the academy, and some people do end up going to the Canadian border. When I was going through, yes, they do now. But when I was going through,

everyone had to go to the Southern border. Okay. You had to do a number of years there. I was wondering if the people who get assigned to the Canadian border are like the equivalent of the Catholic missionaries who get assigned to Rome or the Mormon missionaries who get assigned to Salt Lake City, Utah. They're like, we don't have a lot of confidence. Yeah. You're a Quaker missionary assigned to Pennsylvania. Like, oh,

well, I mean. Back then, it was wildly underfunded and understaffed, like it is today, which is great. And obviously, we have a better understanding of the flows of illegal commerce into our country. And when I say illegal commerce, I mean everything, drugs, you need people, et cetera. Certainly, it's a multi-billion dollar machine. And we're going to strengthen the southern border, maybe. Then they're going to find another area to use and move their product.

I think that's one thing we know for sure. Yeah. Cool. All right. So 2000, you get picked up by the service and you start in Detroit Rock City, Motown, man. You, Kid Rock, and the Tigers, Sparky Anderson, are calling Detroit home. Yeah. I was so excited. I got in my Anya Grand Prix, right? I packed up everything I owned, right? And drove, you know, practically all night, two, three nights to drive from El Centro to Detroit. I was, I just, I barely slept. I was so excited.

You know, like so many of us that get on this job, right? You know, I will say I got the call when I got an offer. I worked a midnight shift from the Border Patrol, got a call from a leader from the San Diego office who said, hey, look, you know, I asked for Columbus, Ohio, right? You know, that's kind of my home. You know, they were kind of like, at the time, of course, as you may remember,

they're like, hey, start in a bigger office, right? Maybe you can try and end in Columbus, but you know, most people have to do a big ugly, I think is a phrase that we haven't heard that in a long time, but big uglies were there. And I'm like, well, Big ugly is one of our, you know, major field office in a major city where traffic sucks and it's hard to do anything. Cost of living is high. Cost of living is miserable. And so I said, okay, well, what's, what's the closest one around Columbus?

And, and they, I could hear a pause and I'm like, well, Detroit, you know? And so, hey, I'm for it, right? At the time, and look, I empathize with folks who can't take the job anywhere for whatever reason. But I was not that guy. He would have said, we have a spot in Spokane or wherever. I mean, I love it. I love Spokane in the winter. Like, it's fantastic. It doesn't matter what he said. I was going to say, yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. I want to be a part of this, right? It doesn't matter where it is.

He said Detroit. I'm like, oh, I love Detroit. Go ahead. That's great. And he goes, Bosses on this job are going to promise you things along the way. And sometimes it'll work out. And sometimes it won't. But this is one promise I guarantee you I can get you. So sure enough. Hey, dudes, you want to go to Detroit? I promise I can get you Detroit. Oh, no. Yeah, not in the bar. Yes, he threw me in there. And so a great office, great people, great leaders.

Am I allowed to say their names? I don't know. Entirely up to you. They're great leaders. I have Dez Scanlon, Bill Cousins, Phil Spampanato. Just a great bunch of folks. And again, it's Joe Viviano, Tom Catalano, Bob Beller, just really great leaders that really set a positive example. And we're not afraid to say, hey, this is not the path. This is you're going the wrong way. This is the way. And all of them great leaders and great, great folks to this day.

Again so very fortunate to start there with some great also some great great folks left and right of me i had a lot of great mentors that went on did great things in the service that's cool well very very fortunate and close to columbus so to me it's a win-win right it's you know so you know ultimately and uh you know funny the dea called you know and essentially they're like oh all the all the spots for the next couple classes are going to be on the southwest border and

you can already outblast fan you all a little bit tom and el centro and you've had you know like where do you think you're going you're not going to columbus ohio right so so i was like thank you very much for your time and i found my way i think so made the decision easier for you it was there was really no decision really i mean it was just but it was still you know look you know as well as i do there are no guarantees in the 1811 world right you know there's you know you think

you got you think you're doing great and the next thing you know you're something trips you up and you're you know you have to go a different path so yeah uh yeah very fortunate to land in detroit the. And you're not the first, applying to federal agencies, sort of exploring what you want to do feels a little bit like Fraternity Rush, right? You're checking several out. You've got applications out. You're hoping to get bids from a number of people.

And then you're like, and bid day comes around and you might get five bids, but you know what? You're like, no, that's the house I belong in. You know, like, I want to go over there to the Secret Service. That's awesome. So you do Detroit, Great leaders, man. What a great opportunity there. In 05, you come to Dignitary Protection, right? Or 05? 05. I did Dignitary Protection. That's when we met Jim. And honestly, that should have been the highlight. It is me.

That's what my tattoo says. Treasury for life, right? Yeah, exactly. So the agency changed the way we send people to big details at the time. And so I think, was it like maybe the year before that, you know, they started making new people to D.C. You either, maybe it was TID or our intelligence division or that. And I got to tell you, I mean, at the time people kind of were kind of hemming and hawing and was negative about it.

But I actually thought it was a great, I actually really appreciated that time, that year or so. I forget how long I did, a little over a year maybe, to learn the city, to learn how things work. Yeah. I mean, I got a place right downtown. I went and bought a place and as soon as I bought it, it started to lose value. Like as I was signing it, it was like, you know, the ink was starting to erase off the dollars that I had to pay. But timing is everything as they say. Yeah.

But it was great to live downtown there for a while and really appreciate that time. No, and I remember feeling the same way, and I don't know how Detroit was, but in Sacramento, yeah, we got maybe one, maybe two protection visits a year. I did plenty of post-standing, but I didn't have the reps that somebody in Chicago or WFO or NIFO or Miami had for protection operations. You know, so working the shift, I mean, it just didn't happen.

And so I was really grateful to go there and like, oh, that's right. Hey, this is the Formate. This is the diamond. This is how we work the doors. This is all the stuff. And we had some good leadership there. Greg Alamarez, I thought was exceptional in his ability to teach and in his patience with all of us young, super eager, but under-informed. Yeah. Ambitious. That's fair. That's fair. Under-informed guys.

It's gracious. I think we're gracious right now. Yeah, and then off to PPD, the Presidential Protective Division. Yeah, so this is all the Bush era, 0405, so his second term. And when we're on Secretary of Treasury, that's Jon Snow at the time. And I think he was... Gone in 05, but your treasury time and mine was just all Jon Snow, right? Yeah, it was all Jon Snow. Yeah, okay. Yeah, good dude, funny dude. I shouldn't call him a dude.

A very entertaining, very personal. Cabinet member, secretary of the treasury. Cabinet member, secretary of the treasury, one of the oldest cabinet members in a nation's history. In the shadow of Alexander Hamilton, I shouldn't call him a good dude, but I liked him. He was enjoyable to be around. And again, very personable, and that was fun. was a fun time.

Yeah. And, and it's, and out of that experience. So when, when you're applying, you know, for the secret service or any of these jobs that have a top secret clearance, you know, they not only do the background check, but it's several layers deep. And so they get to a buddy of mine and he calls me afterwards and I said, Oh, you know, he says, Hey, they, they came and talked to me for your background check. I said, Oh, well, that's, that's great. He said, yeah, I had some questions for him.

And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, please, oh dear God, please don't ruin this. Just shut up. And he said, listen, he's talking to a seasoned agent and he said, what makes this job work for you? Like, hey, how do I know my friend Jim is going to be all right here? Oh, I'm so glad he's doing this vetting for you. Which is hilarious in its own But the guy took it in stride.

He goes, man, you know, I think what has made this job work for me is you find a couple of guys that you can call friends, that you can be honest with and make that happen. No matter where you go, no matter what happens, like do that and this job can work. And I think on Treasury, man, I found my tribe and you and TC and a couple others. And so, you know, forged in fire, if you will, forged in nonsense is really the story.

But then, yeah, so then we go on to the President's Detail together and different shifts and all that other stuff.

But, you know, hey, that's your story. So tell us, give us your highlights on PPD. What was that for you? Well, you know, really what I wanted to do, well, first of all, fortunate to get to the President's Detail. Yeah. So I distinctly remember, you know, obviously competition, you know, it's a little bit of everything, right? And so happy just to get there, to get a small seat at the small table. And so ultimately, what I want to do is drive, right? That's what I want to

do. I really want to be our transportation section. And, you know, a lot of my friends on other sections, whether it be first lady or counter surveillance, will say, oh, that's cool. I got my driver's license when I was 16. I'm so glad you like to drive. That is what I say. Yeah. I think I was paraphrasing you. Some people have said, by some people, I mean me. Exactly. No, it's fine. Yeah. But yeah, I want to drive. I thought that was a really cool thing.

I think I enjoyed actually the advances more than I liked the actual physical driving part. But the advances obviously are pretty complex as far as a lot of moving parts and really get to work with our local and state partners a lot. I love, love that. You can't move the president almost anywhere, really, frankly. I think your listeners hopefully understand that is that we are nothing without our partnerships.

And ultimately that was real. I got to really forge those partnerships with our local and state partners and we're going out and securing motorcade routes of 30 and 40 miles. I mean, that's, you know, that's all relationships right there. So, you know, and that was what I really enjoyed doing a lot and did that, you know, both domestically and overseas. I was fortunate to do some of that. So super excited to do that and that was really the highlight.

I mean, certainly there were some other cool, really cool things, you know. I mean, obviously, you know, We checked a lot of countries off the bucket list during those years, as most agents do. So, I mean, we're not unique in that. But, you know, I think I retired in 48 countries, all 50 states. And I think I got my 50th state, Kansas, right? So, in my last assignment, I was in St. Louis. I was able to do Kansas there. So, I visit all 50 states. Again, got to do some relatable things.

Kansas, of course, named after the band. Of course, yes. Rest in the Wind, classic. Right. You know, right. And so, yeah, it was just a wonderful time to go see the world and just build on those relationships. And you spend a lot of time with your tribe, as you say, right? And so you're spending a lot of time traveling, a lot of time sitting in the truck. A lot of times, you know, obviously that's not the part they put in the pamphlet.

But, you know, like, you know, our physical presence is often, you know, is often required, right? It's not just our time and attention. Yeah. Presence. And so I got to spend a lot of time with some great folks that I think some of your other, podcast guests have really hit the nail on the head. It's the job is who you make it with, right? That's really some of the best friends you could ever have.

And even the folks that I think we were talking before we started recording, you know, even the folks that you may or may not love, like super tight friends, which is totally fine, right? You know, you still got along with everybody really well, and you still had a lot of confidence in them, knowing that they were very hardworking folks, right?

That was really one of the best things I took from that time is everybody was totally focused on the mission Everyone understood the importance of it and put everything they had into it. Yeah. You know, and that's an interesting point. There are always people that you work with and maybe they're not your cup of tea. And that certainly happened, you know, for me on a couple of occasions. And let's be clear, I am confident I am that for some people.

Yeah, yeah. Who might hear this now and go, Holcomb, that's you. Like, we don't like working with you. And I always try to, hey, take that step back and go, hey, at the end of the day, this is a person who signed up to do the same job I did. And, and, and there's, there's only one of a couple of reasons you choose to do this job. Yeah. You know, and, and in those top three to five reasons has to be, man, I love my country. I'm willing to sacrifice.

And, you know, so if that's part of your DNA, you know what, man, I got it's, it's on me to find some common ground in that it's on me to bridge that gap and, and extend that grace, you know, so. We have more in common with each other than we do not. and sit in an eight-hour shift with someone, a guy or gal, and not find something to talk about, then that's on you, right? You're not trying hard enough. You're not trying hard enough. Yeah.

And thinking back to that time, you know, whether it's treasury and we're sitting in the follow-up, you know, waiting for a secretary of treasury or, you know, doing the advances, this is all before the advent of the smartphone. And, you know, and now, man, hey, everybody can kind of do their own thing and be lost.

And I can talk to my friends back home or, you know, in another part of the service but man we show up at shift change at 6 a.m and man we're talking for the next three hours before you know and i'm gonna highlight one of my favorite memories and you're like hey i went and had and it might have been we might have been the afternoon shift but you had gone for coffee that morning and you met this stunning wildly attractive amazing doctor who ends up becoming your wife and i i love yeah what i love

sharing in that like remembering that story, but but i wonder if in the age of the smartphone like that doesn't get missed yeah yeah for sure man no question about it it's you know ultimately you have no other thing but the person you're with to talk to right and so you know in in the modern era now that may be missed of course but of course i was i was suit number one super lucky right right to to have met her of course and and that's full stop and and the show yeah why don't you

leave and just bring her on and i'll just you know yeah so for your listeners so she knows my wife for a long long time they're they're good friends too so i mean you know ultimately you know it's you know my i'm okay with this i know it now i want to talk to her and say hey when when you talk to tom later did he talk about working with me that day like he talked about meeting you he's excited about this is not yeah.

How are you feeling about it how are you how are you feeling about tom working with me i mean that's really the question uh but you know like in a i think that's that that makes the relationships you know and then yeah hey man and i'm there for the for the long haul again you talk about making friends and and at the wedding and then for the birth of your kids and now you know they're going off to college and we're talking and scheming about that and like it's all this good stuff

man like it's it's crazy but it's been i i am i am more involved i'm more involved in your life than I am my siblings. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Yeah. That's quite a bit. And I hear that all the time. And I have other friends who have other life things going on and we form a little bit of a sounding board, you know?

And so it's important because as you get older, right, everyone sees things from a little bit different perspective and you need some folks to give you that honest truth and honest feedback sometimes, you know? Like, hey, is this school worth it? Like, what is the role there for your kids? Go sending them there. Like, you think you're going to send them there, why? Can you explain to me why you're going to spend $100,000 to send your kid to this school? What's the value there?

And you need that group to bounce ideas off of and to really give you some honest perspective. And so I know I personally found that in the service of a lot of folks even to this day. So lifelong friendships, honestly. Yeah. And good, honest people who, again, you go back to, we know what brought us to the job. And if we had to list our top five, I think we'd find two or three to be the same. And so, hey, you could build a tribe off of that.

It's the saying when you retire, you know, I don't miss the circus, but I do miss the clowns. And so that's how I feel in many ways, right? Agreed. And there are guys, you know, you and I talk on a pretty regular basis. There are guys, well, you know, Craig last week, I haven't talked to Craig in over a decade. Right. And we become friends from one post-standing assignment in Wyoming in 2003. And that one experience, and we don't work together again.

I'm not sure we ever stand post, but dude, if he was coming through Tennessee, he would stay at my house. There's next to nothing I wouldn't do for that guy. And that's unique. That's a unique work experience. Hey, I challenge people at IBM to have the same feelings about their coworkers that we do. No question. Yeah, I mean, you might not work with someone for a decade. And you'll see them just because the nature of our organization is certainly small by other federal standards.

I think we would call ourselves a small organization. You know, you will cross paths with just about everyone. You know, it's rare when in our vintage, when you're like, as you see a name, you'll at least be comfortable seeing a name and you kind of understand where that person may or may not be or what kind of way, what their specialty is. And it's pretty rare to come across like, I have never seen or heard of that

person before. I mean, the last couple of years of my job may be new folks, but our generation, you're crossing paths with everybody. Yeah, the exceptions are the guys who did the Texas Two-Step or the Atlanta or the Georgia Shuffle. You know, they started in Atlanta, did Carter, then went back to Atlanta. And, man, I just, I never met them, never seen them. You know, and no complaints.

But, you know, otherwise, I think you're right. Like, hey, if we drill down, I'm sure we were on a car plane together at some point. Yeah. You know, we were standing, posting the same farewell. You had a message in Morocco with some person that you haven't seen until years later, and you have just a great story. Yeah. Hey, weren't we in, you know, Thailand in 06? You know, something like that. So, yeah, it happens all the time.

And even now, like in our retired lives, you know, on LinkedIn and things like this, you know, someone will reach out to you and you'll make connection with someone. And I will tell you one thing I've tried to do, and this is just me, all right? Once a month I try and reach out to somebody I haven't talked to.

Let's use social, let's use the interweb for something positive, right, and I will try and reach out to somebody and say hey, we haven't talked in forever, hell, you might not even like me I don't remember, but let's face it, we're all getting older, right. And if we did have a little tiff 25 years ago, I hope we can get over it now, right You know, I reach out and try and say, Hey, how you doing? How's life? How's life been treating you? How you been? Yeah.

What are you doing? You know, can I help you in any way? Or, you know, that's cool, man. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So good. one of the things we got to do is do our logistics assignment together. And for the uninitiated, hey, what is that? What does that look like? Listen, I'll say it so you don't have to. Not all foreign logistics assignments are created equal. And some of them are a big suck. And I think ours was one of those, but we were up for the challenge. So yeah, no question.

Yeah. So let's start with, you know, hey, what's the need for a foreign logistics assignment? Certainly, yeah. So anytime our elected leadership goes overseas, it's a big circus, right? And so whether it's people, personnel, equipment, vehicles, you name it, the circus comes to town. And when you go to certain countries, it's more difficult than others, right? There's certainly language barriers that can play. And then there's also maybe political differences.

I think in some ways, our name, the Secret Service, helps us in some ways. But I think overseas, in some ways, it hurts us. 100%. Because those countries combine their protective and intelligence services in many ways, so they're kind of one and the same, right? Where we have a very strict separation between intelligence operations. Intelligence network, and the protective network. And the military as well. Yeah, yeah. In some countries, the protection is run by the military, and that's not us.

Right, right. So they're assuming that they run the way we run, and that we are listening, and we're not, we're straight meat and potatoes, fundamentals, I'm not saying it's an easy job, I'm just saying this is our lane, and we stay in it. Segregated, sure.

And so I think in this case it hurts us, because when we did Beijing, China, I think obviously it was a challenge from before we even hit the ground, to all the way until we were wheels up at the end, and obviously when people, personnel come into town, I distinctly remember counting every bullet that we brought into this country, right? Which is, I will just say, that's not normally the case. It's not normal the case. It's like, hey, we have X amount. They usually say,

okay, we trust you. You have this amount, right? But not in this case. We literally had to count. And it was freezing. It was very cold. And I remember click, click, click, click, counting every bullet. And certainly it was a challenge there. I certainly will never forget that for sure. But also what made the assignment great was the people, right? Again, man, everything is the people, right? Everything. So our leader, our fearless leader, Mr. Curtis Hamby, right?

Big shout out to Curtis, who also just retired. So we're serious. This guy, you know, great. I talked to him just the other day about some other stuff and he's doing great. So glad to hear that. So, you know, Jim, this is really all. This is your birth child here. So, I mean, I'm going to give you the credit for it. But, you know, as we're sitting there working and, you know, these are not eight hour days, right?

These are not, these are, you know, and everyone that has done this will certainly be shaking their head right now. Like, yeah, this is, it takes however long it takes. It takes what it takes. Talks what it takes. The mission, you can be done when it's over. But it's certainly several 24 hour days in this. And it was a three night visit, I think. It was a three, yeah, three night hour away. It's very unusual for the president

or vice president to sit three days in a foreign country. It was a big Asia swing. We had friends that were in Japan, we had friends in South Korea, and he came to us and there were literally car planes leapfrogging from one location to another and it was wild. But to break up the monotony, right Jim, the Rolex edition, 2000. There was a watch culture in the secret. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There are people who appreciate the finer things in life, right?

And we'd just come through, well, maybe not just come through, but there were a couple of special watch, squadron watch orders that had been done. You know, we were lucky enough to do one with Breitling, and that was probably the one, you know, that I remember. So there we are in Beijing, and... Yeah, and so we got together. So there's shopping markets that are right outside our hotel or around our hotel. And so, you know, we would do like a daily kind of a shopping,

you know, swing, you know, if time permitted, right? And so, of course, you could buy anything you wanted, right? Of course, the dubious lineage and heritage, right? So, you know, the Rolex that you get, you know, may not be exactly direct from the factory, right? So, but this is all new to me. Yes, I bought my wife 10 new bags. I thought I was a hero, but didn't work out that way.

But so, and this is your credit, Jim, you found a vendor, right that was offering a beautiful new edition rolex submariner with a green face the green face which was amazing right because you don't see those around very often and so we got together we pooled our limited resources and we were able to purchase how many was it we purchased dude well however many people we brought i mean it had to be 150 easily easily and so for for those listening,

you know, when the logistics folks are also responsible to provide everyone a couple bottles of water, maybe a welcome to Beijing packet, you know, just some general safety tips. You know, how to call 911, things like that. Just, you know, it's a nice pleasantry type thing. And then Jim, again, this is you, we wrote up, we wrote up, you know, a Beijing Rolex edition. So we purchased a Rolex slot for every person that came to the country.

And we knew who they were because we're we control the the personnel manifests and so we gave everyone a special edition rolex and so i what was the cost like per per unit per unit maybe two dollars and fifty two dollars maybe by the time i finished haggling and negotiating uh and come back with two you made his month you made his month for sure right because you know he sold 150 watches in 20 minutes and so And so we laid this out and then, you know,

we typed out a nice welcome to Beijing and please, you know, share in the 2009 Rolex Beijing edition. It takes a true road warrior to earn the Beijing Rolex edition. And sure enough, the next day we saw several senior leaders, right, in the organization sporting these watches that I'm sure probably stopped working before they even got on the plane to leave, I'm sure. But, you know, we do not provide the guarantee. I know.

We just did the delivery. I assume any warranty issues should be taken up with Rolex. Exactly. You should call them directly or help you fix your watch. But yes, and so it was just something, it was just one of those things I never will forget. There are people that come all the time and bring that up and mention that to me all the time. And so it was just, oh, what a great way to break up what was otherwise a pretty arduous trip. Just a hint of ridiculous.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, it made a lot of sense for us because we hadn't slept in two days. And we're like, oh, wouldn't this be funny? And that's usually my, you know, the only hurdle I have to clear is this is funny, right? And if people say yes, then I'm going to do it. It's a pretty low bar, though. It's a pretty low bar. I am an easy mark, especially with my own jokes. Yes. And we think we're very funny.

I think we're funny. Again, let's see. One out of one special agent in charge of the president's detail thought we were funny. 100% performance rating there. And so, yes. And they did actually, the deputy also said something and said, hey, man, this is really funny. Like, thank you. This is a tough trip. This has been a tough trip. Thank you very much. And again, that's, you know, when you're hustling, you're working hard, just that little bit of

feedback is like rocket fuel, right? I mean, it's really important. It really is. Well, in the logistics thing, what I think people don't recognize if they don't do it, you know, the former details don't do that, right? They don't send a logistics guy out, okay, for foreign trips. So we do. And so it's a minimum 10 days plus the length of the visit.

And you know and then we it's sort of a divide and conquer scenario where you handled all of the rooms is that right yes i didn't read and i did all the vehicle logistics yeah you know in a country where the drivers may or may not speak english and and so getting everybody everywhere they needed to go for three days you know it is is no small feat yeah right and which includes It's things like, man, I had finally got some sleep. I was able to close my eyes and my local cell phone rings.

And it's, you know, guys who I know and love and, you know, would never hand. And things happen, man. And they said, hey, Holcomb, we're up on the Great Wall of China. And I'm like, hey, man, congrats. This is going to be fantastic for you. They said, we're lost. We don't know how to find our way back to the car. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm like, man.

So again from my hotel room and the great wall is usually an hour plus away and i'm like all right i i had only been there like we didn't you and i went later yeah we went after the visit but i had only previously gone there for a visit of secretary of treasury snow back in probably spring of 05 or something like that so i'm like, Okay, hey, assuming it works the same way it did when I was here six years ago, or five years ago, then do you see a sign for a slide?

You know, and they're like, hey, were you dropped off by this place? And like, yes, okay. Hey, try to look for a sign that looks like this. You know, and again, completely in the blind. But these are the questions that you were asking. So it's not like I can drive there and go find them. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, okay. They weren't working, right? They were just on their off time trying to find the Great Wall. Just to take the side seat, right?

Much like, hey, the one time I went to India, Dave Torres and I had, we worked the midnight shift. We had one day if we were going to go see the Taj. So we got up the butt crack and gone, hopped a train, came back, worked the midnight shift. And these guys were doing that for the Great Wall. And it worked. You know, whatever. I'm like, hey, look for this sign.

It looks like this and and your your car will be waiting for you down at the bottom of the you know and it may have been able to call the driver somehow or called the dispatch and said hey find out where your driver is yeah right right you know and it all worked out and they got back but but then that's the that's the crazy stuff and it's it's the difference between doing a foreign logistics in say canada or yeah london where people habla english it's

a little better right yeah right they could read the signs and that's yeah that's wild man all right so and listen yeah i don't want to get bogged down in in the stories of the presidency tale though it's very very exciting you do some time as a shift leader on the chief of staff and that was ram emmanuel in the bush in the obama administration rather yeah great assignment for you you do a really cool trip to india do you want to touch and go on that and then i want to jump over to,

So I will play, I do want to give Paul Ekloff a lot of credit here. So I'm giving Paul Ekloff twice credit here in both this and in airspace. We're sitting at Camp David in the truck. And my wife, of course, that you've talked too much about already, is, it doesn't make me feel a little uncomfortable, but that's fine. Ultimately, he, you know, we just went to India. My wife's Indian. And so we went to Carroll. We did the tags. We did the whole thing. It was beautiful. It was a really cool trip.

A really cool trip. So I'm sitting in there and of course, you know, I'm talking about this trip and, you know, you know, a lot of guys are like, oh, India. Okay. You know, like, okay, good, good and bad. You know, some people have some, some, you know, have had bad trips or bad experience. I didn't. I thought it was great. So it turns out that the chief of staff is going to take his family on like a month long trip to India.

And so that's a unique opportunity, unique opportunity. And I use air quotes for opportunity. So I think Paul is talking to one of the supervisors in Camp David while the president's playing basketball. And I think I wasn't there. So I think there's a little bit of chatter like, oh, you know, this is trip coming up. Oh, we're going to have a tough time staffing this, blah, blah, blah. And I think Mr. Echoloff may have said, Landry just went to India.

He'd be great for this, you know. So next thing you know, Landry, come on in. And so that's how I got this assignment. And so it turned out to be great. We covered darn near the whole country. We were there for several weeks in advance. You know, everything. You name it, we did everything. And some rural, some very off-the-grid. Tiger preserves. He did a tiger preserve. And we were looking for some people to do some of these advances with us.

And so there was definitely a lot of interest in that. And there were some cool assignments out there. Yeah. A lot of time in New Delhi. And then, of course, we went down to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, of course. And just an amazing trip. I mean, really. I mean, it was just one of these trips that it's a unique trip. Not everybody gets to do something like that. And we also were able to follow that up with a family trip to Israel as well for almost 30 days as well.

So we were able to do two big long-term trips there that were really cool and really culturally significant for me. Just, you know, separate the work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. You know, you get to spend, you know, almost a month in a foreign country. You learn a lot about that culture. And again, I think the folks that do well in our job are folks that have an open mind to different things, right? Because otherwise, you're going to be pretty miserable, right?

Yeah, be curious. Yeah, you must be. What makes India? Yeah. Yeah, so that was cool, and Israel was cool. So a couple long-term assignments that I really thought were great, and again, great team efforts, but awesome. Do I remember correctly, there were special weapons checked out? To go for the wild animal preserves? Like, did you guys take the standard cache of weapons that we issue or? Yeah, no, I think it was standard. I think it was. Nothing special from the Galvin library? Not from us.

I know the people we were with had stuff, but not service provided. So, you know, I don't get too far in the weeds, but I know we have. Somebody else had the rhino killers. That was not our trip. No, I don't. That was not ours. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I don't want to get too far in the weeds there, but, you know. Yeah. No, man, and I think those are both really cool trips and highlight that, hey, our response has to match the expectations and the desires of a protectee, right?

And so it's the, and one of the many things I love about the service is, hey, you know, we really do put the service in secret service. If you have a protectee who shows up to the Oval Office and decides he's now a mountain biker, all right, well, hey, who do we got? Sure, yeah. How do we adapt this? You see that a lot on the West Coast on the skiers, right? They have folks who are mountain bike horseback riders and skiers.

Believe me, that's not me, but there are folks in the job that have those skills and develop those skills over time. And that's just one of the special things about our organization is that we will step up to do that stuff. And on our locator, for the agent profile, there used to be boxes you could check. Oh, yeah. I'm a marathon runner.

And it happens. These are the crazy things that happen. And you've got a foreign dignitary that flies in because they've always wanted to do the Boston Marathon. And now we've got to find two or three people that can run the Boston Marathon with them. Or at least break it up into four segments for them, you know, so that these guys can run a 10K effortlessly. And they staff that. Or, again, someone's coming in and they want to go skiing.

You know, again, the protectee wants to ride mountain bikes. Or, you know, hey, suddenly I like to spend time on the water. Well, we have an entire water safety program built around the standards of the Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer that we put people through. I think it's pretty fair to say maybe one of the most challenging pieces of training that we have in the service, right? You know, countersault being right there with it, probably.

But certainly water safety, I think, is right there. I know you're a veteran program. I am not. I don't swim very well, so that probably would not be good for me. Yeah, but that's, you know, it just tells you that we have some amazing people. Well, and just the commitment, man, that we bring to the job of staffing all these really unique opportunities. You know, we don't get to say no is really how it is.

And in the lore of the Secret Service, I think one of the only times I'm aware that they told a protectee no is Nixon wanted to go surfing. I think I read that in a book somewhere, and they said no. And this is before us having the water safety program. So, you know, we didn't have that at the time. And they're like, yeah, I mean, we can't let you out in the Pacific Ocean. You know, on a surfboard. I think they could have made that happen, right? I think they could have.

Oh, I'll make that happen. Well, I remember hearing the story of the first time President Bush went to Iraq, and Andy Card, the chief of staff, came into the SACS office and said, the president is going to Iraq, and no is not an answer. Yeah, right, yeah. You know, and so figure it out. Smart man there, right? He said, no is not an answer, so let's get past the denial and get the yes stage, right? Let's get to the how-to stage. The assumptive close of, hey,

this is happening. You should figure out how to make it happen. I don't want to hear the reasons why we can't do it. Why we can't do it. We're Americans. Not Americans. I apologize. Can you edit that out later? No. Let's park on that for a second. When I'm in San Francisco, in the 2016 campaign, I have a staffer coming out to advance a Bernie Sanders. Bernie does a couple rallies out in California. And this very ambitious staffer wants to do, you know, no shortage of interesting things. Right.

And, you know, there's some denials. And I drop on him, hey, we're Americans, not Americans. Right. So fast forward to the end, and he's long gone. and somebody from this venue calls us and says, hey, we've got this outstanding bill that you guys are on the hook for. And I'm like, Secret Service does not pay for venues. That's a staff thing. Do you remember who the staffer was that promised you this? And he says, I don't, but he loved to say we're Americans, not Americans.

I'm like, I have his number. Here you go. We protected him so well, right? I handed him up at the first opportunity.

I'm like, this is the gentleman you need to call. bill with interest now it is 1.4 million dollars right right so hilarious man so then unless you got anything else you really want to chat about about the president's detail i'd love to talk about your time at airspace which is where you go after that yeah yeah so so very fortunate you know certainly airspace security at the time was it was not new right so it was of course invented in

the aftermath of 9-11 tragedies you know the risk from air became of course you know front center. And so the service took that initiative on and started, you know, started building a program from the ground up, which as you know, is really challenging, right? It's not easy to just start a national, in fact, a global program where you have to get all the right players in place because, you know, the Secret Service does not own any fighter jets.

And, you know, we do not own, we do not own any bombers or fighter jets, or in fact, you know, you know, at that time, radar capabilities. Way to lift the veil of awesomeness, Tom. Yeah, sorry. He's not owned fighter jets. I told you earlier, I don't want to get into anything sensitive. It's looking news. It's okay, Chris. But we do have friends that do have them. We have friends. And so ultimately, the program was started by some really bright folks that came up with this.

And by the time I got there in 2010, by the time I left the President Detail, the process and procedures were fairly well implemented. They were already, you know, they had been up and running for a while. But still, there was a lot of lack of understanding of air risk, you know, risk from the air. Now, of course, look, everybody now on YouTube sees the Ukraine-Russian conflict

and that war. And you see the drone wars and you see, you know, obviously we're, you know, we're several years into drones being used kinetically for, you know, for offensive purposes. And so, but back then it was still kind of just the thought of what was possible, right? It was like, hey, couldn't you put X, Y, and Z and use this, you know, to attack an elected official or an event or something like that. And so, and so it was, it was still in its, you know, really birth phase in some ways.

Loved that assignment, right? Great. First of all, great people, right? And you're going to hear this in every assignment, great people, right? I've been very fortunate to work with great people at every step, right? And so smart people, right? Paul Ekloth, Michael Ferrier, a lot of guys that are just super people, super agents, very competent. Hopefully they don't mind me mentioning their name.

But, you know, what I loved about airspace is, you know, coming off the president's detail, you know, you're kind of, you know, I say this very respectfully and humbly. You know, like you're kind of at the peak of the game as far as what you're doing from a protection standpoint, you know, in general, you know, like you're coming off one of those big details or any protection detail, really.

So and then I stepped in airspace security where I was the dumbest person in the room for a very long time, you know, and I don't mean in the secret service room. I mean, when we're when we're working with our partners at the FAA, at TSA, at Department of Defense, these are lifelong aviation experts.

They have forgotten more about airspace than i would anyone in the secret church has ever known right they read aviation books for fun yes yes yes what we talk about for protection like in risks and we talk we study historic assassinations and things like that to learn you know you have to learn from the enemy and you have to learn you have to learn they're learning and they're studying about you name it right and so

i i was you know i loved that assignment because was for the first six months or so, it was this is what we hope to not have happen or this is what we want to have happen. Aviation professionals, how do we get there? Like you tell me, like before I start saying what the Secret Service wants, before I make this request, what does that mean, right? And I'll use a good example. And that's runaway sweeps at airports, right?

None of this is sensitive, so I don't want to, you know, I want to make sure I don't touch on anything that some stuff is, but this is not. You know, when Air Force One and Air Force Two goes around, you know, we want to make sure that the runway has a safe landing area. This is, you know, we've been doing this since the season. There's no FOD, there's no four-nob, no debris, you know, that's going to get affected by the engine.

And doing this forever, right? So making sure that runways have no dangerous things that we can't, you know, predict and prevent. And so, well, when you do that at Andrews Air Force Base, that's one thing. When you do that at SFO or LaGuardia or Logan or Atlanta-Hartsfield, right? That's a totally different animal, right? People are, yeah. Yeah, yeah. When you ask or you do that, the airspace is so interconnected, right, that when you, you know, when a butterfly flasked its

wings in, you know. In Dolly. Exactly. Yeah, there's a malaise in Des Moines, right? But to be completely honest, I mean, at SFO, you shut a runway down. Look, you know, from our perspective, right, I think the story was, you know, President Clinton got a haircut. Got a haircut at LAX. Yeah. And so there were multiple runways that were not laying or taking planes off for, you know, an hour. Well, what do you think that does to the worldwide global airspace?

It causes calamity and planes, you know, having to, you know, reroute and fuel, you know, you want to talk about fuel loss and, you know, but remember we weren't paying the bills. So, you know, ultimately we didn't care about it, but it was great to go to these folks and say, Hey, how, how short can we make this runway sweet? Right.

To make it safe, to get what you need to do. We want to make sure that the mission gets done, but can we, can we shrink it a little like, you know, can we, you know, and so, And so hearing those aviation professionals talk about, yes, we're going to support your mission, right? But let's have a partnership here. Like, let's not just say, hey, shut it down for an hour. We're good, right? No, we're not good. Like, let's, you know, is 10 minutes enough? Is 15 minutes enough?

And of course, everywhere's a little different. I don't want to talk too much about it. But, you know, ultimately, can we be a good partner to our airspace partners as well, right? Because when we leave, we want to leave and we want to have that relationship be in good condition, right? You know, you don't want to have like, oh, gosh, the president's coming. That means the Secret Service is coming. Oh, they're going to want, you know, like, you know, we don't want that.

We want it to be, hey, let's work together to make it as collaborative as possible, safe, but also make it to where you'd like to see us come back. Mm-hmm. And so airspace was great in that regard, because, you know, we got to, I got to learn a lot. And I got to, you know, really kind of improve on some of those areas where we probably should have been tighter over the years. But, you know, as we learn more, we get, we get smarter, we get better, more efficient, right?

And, you know, ultimately, that was the case in airspace. Again, great folks, great, great mission. I learned more in that assignment than I did in any other assignment, right?

And i think just from a pure interest level and you know again i gotta give a lot of credit to the guy guys and gals that came before me and the leadership that was there was was very good so ever and i think you know in like any job hey you know what you know and we we understand the the security footprint but then you know hey you leave the presence you tell you go to this airspace security then airspace is infinite like how i secure infinite yeah exactly

and what goes into that what is possible you know and i and i and i hope somewhere there's somebody locked in a room asking that question what is possible what's the next vulnerability that can come from airspace you know and now we're living in the age of drones and you know my understanding is we're doing a lot of very capable and interesting and have been yeah yeah i want to be clear with like this isn't like oh yeah we should do this now because of the ukraine russia war it's been

oh lord time in the making. We just saw the capabilities of our American armed forces in the recent bombing. But just bear in mind.

July 4th yesterday we got to tip our caps to the armed forces capabilities commitment unparalleled i mean it's and you got to see i got to see we got to see behind the curtain a little bit you know on the president's detail and and those details but when you go to an assignment like airspace you really can see you know just how awesome our capabilities are and uh and again we don't have fighter jets but we have good friends that have fighter jets that's right

that's right and so it's great so a big tip of the cap to those folks who are committed 24-7, 365. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. You're at airspace and then you, your next stop is the George Bush detail, right? Yeah, exactly.

Right. Yeah. So, so, you know, at the time, you know, most folks, I think you had to leave DC to go do a leadership assignment and your career. Oh, they allege, right? Yeah. I mean, they did at the time, I can tell you that. I believe they've changed those rules, which, you know, all things change.

And so we, you know, I always joke with, with my wife well i actually didn't bid on this assignment they just thought tom landry should be in dallas and so they just sent me there and so but amazing experience i still live in dallas now, and you know ultimately it has nothing to do with the name even though reservations are great and easy to get as tom landry exactly yeah and so i thought i'd be coming down here for a couple years and and then back to dc which you know where

which is the the beehive of course but but the wife you mentioned earlier, and the kids fell in love with it, absolutely fell in love with it. And I wasn't sure what to expect, but we're Texans now, right? So there's no doubt about that. And I know some people that were born and bred here might may take umbrage with that, but it's like- I don't take umbrage. Yeah, it's all right. The Tom Landry story may not come up again, but one of my all-time favorites.

And listen, in the progression of the service, there comes a time where, hey, you're the new guy with all the new fresh ideas and you're gung-ho ready to go. And then at the end of your career, you realize, man, I'm the old guy that I thought was really old at the end of this. And I love the story. You're going down to do advanced work for the Bush Daughters in South America.

And and and again your name is tom landry your nickname is naturally coach and so you're signing the emails to everybody is coach you know and your email is tom landry and you get down there and and you guys have a great visit and again you're wonderfully personable and everybody likes you and the and the the guys confessed to you at the end like man we said you were going to be a jackass when we saw and you're like what like why would you think that well you signed all your emails coach

you know so we thought you you out of the gate yeah we just assumed that you thought you were better than us yeah and that you were our boss and you were in charge and like yeah well no man my my name's tom landry and they're like yeah i don't so yeah it did it didn't register at all they're like and what you know it was funny too because at the afterwards it took two or three rounds of beverages for them to finally go hey man you're not a jackass you're not an ass we thought

we hated you we hated you for a week did you feel it all right i was like yeah i actually did feel a little bit of it but you know i was wondering what it was but you know i shout daily i don't know what's going on here and you only have to be born like four or five years after us which these guys were to completely have missed the tom landry myth i'm gonna tell you just to that point that uh so i'm i'm working midnights

at camp david i'm sorry i'm going back chronologically that's right you know.

On ppd i got a post standing assignment on midnights at camp david and again i don't want to make up to give too much details about that that's a pretty place but i'm working with some young marines right and so young marines so like 23 22 24 something you're you're 35 yeah 35 you know like you know and so which is it sounds like 12 years but that's like a thousand years really you know and so where hey where are you from where are

you from and oh i'm from dallas texas like oh cool well everyone calls me coach tom landry he this young Marine looked at me like nothing, zero, no spark, no recollection, no, oh yeah, like that, and nothing, absolutely nothing. I mean, it was Barry Switzer, he even said, hey, I'm a big cowboy fan, and I'm like, and I'm like, and you know the funny thing that I gave him a hard time, of course, I'd give him a really hard time after that, and I'm like, you do know.

The highway that runs east and west from dallas to fort worth you know you know what that's called oh i-30 i think no what do they call it you know it's got a fedora on the the mat on the thing funny it's the tom landry highway you know so you know you know and so we had a great time but again it just goes to show you yeah i mean like you know you can you know so i do not sign my name my emails coach anymore uh that moment i immediately seized and dismissed because

and in fact the guy that says that i i talked to him recently he brought that story up too and he last. I love it. What am I fair? Fortunately for me, no Holcomb has ever amounted to anything. I have nobody to compare or- Yeah. That makes you the best then, right? You know what? I like your style. It does make me the best of all. Google Tom Landry and you will not see me. You will see an elderly gentleman from Mission, Texas, certainly well-deserving.

Well, if you Google Jim Holcomb, I think he's a sergeant at LAX or something like that. Anytime something happens at LAX, he's there. We do kind of look alike, which is sort of weird, but anyway, nor here nor there. So you're down at the George Bush detail. You get there in 2016. And I like this, man. I got there in 14. I got there in 14. Oh, in 14. Okay. Yeah, but I got, yeah, and then I stuck around in 16. I became the DSAC there. Got it. Okay.

So you got there in 2014. And so President Bush has been a former president for about five years. And I think people should be hip to the fact that we protect former presidents, but I'm not sure we have a good idea of sort of what that looks like, you know, and, hey, what's that window into former president hood, you know, for him and for the agents? Like, what's that up tempo? It's not all guarding tests.

It's not, you know, President Bush still an active guy at that point, man, and getting after it on the bikes. Yeah, for sure. And I will tell you that, again, I don't want to get too into any of the personal stuff. The operational stuff, right. Yeah, definitely not get into that. But very active, you know, very, very active. And no surprise there, that was well-known and is well-known. Look, I hope that I'm as active as he's kicking butt at whatever age.

Let's hope we all do do as well as him. But it presented some challenges for us operationally, right? So, when you're in the president, the circus comes to town and you have, I won't say unlimited resources, because that's not true for your tax paying guests that are listening right now. But it is, in the art of the possible, right? I mean, when we're fully committed to getting something done. We can usually get it done, right? I think, obviously, most people know that.

But when you go into the former life, right, it's a little, it's a slower tempo, right, you know? And so, operationally, we don't maybe get the same level of support all the time. And again, I'm trying to tap dance a little bit here. And so, you got to be a little more creative, right? And so, you know, but still, you still have to provide the same level of support to the protectees and their families. You know, you'd like to do that as much as you can, as close as you can.

Right. But recognize you have to be a little more creative, right? And so, you know, great, great group of folks down at the George Bush Detail.

I think we were talking before we started recording a phenomenal group of senior, senior, let's call them, I think we refer to them as NCOs, right? You know, journeyman agents. I mean, there was a great group down there. Fantastic group. You know, they, a lot of them were from the Dallas field office. So they had a lot of land knowledge. They had a lot of knowledge about how things work or haven't worked historically. Great resources for me personally and for us as an organization.

And then we also got some fresh folks from outside of the Dallas area to come in. A lot of folks, again, a lot of folks got on the bike and rode and were bike riders at a very high level. And like you said earlier, I think you were talking about the marathons. A bike rider that is riding at 90% of their capability is of very little value to us from a protection standpoint, right? Right. If you're if you're fully if you're maxed out just being there,

then you're not going to have much in the tank to respond. Right. Which is what you need. So. Right. So we had some phenomenal folks that were in great condition that I got to tip my cap to them, you know, because the operational tempo is high. You know, you think about, you know, the tempo for the current president, of course, is is what it is. Right. I think it's very high. You go to a former detail and you think like, OK, it'll be slower, but it's really not.

For the agent lifestyle. And I had a lot of respect for the agents that were there. They worked very hard. They worked a lot of hours, right? And, you know, I don't want to get into the staffing part of things, but, you know, they worked, traveled a lot. And so, for those that don't understand that, you know, they'll work their full shift and then have to travel on to the next destination, often on short rest and then having to work again. And so, so a lot of those folks did really strong work.

It's a tough, tough assignment, really, To be honest, because of that, it's a little different in that it's not in D.C., it's not in the fishbowl, but the op-tempo is severe and significant. And so I got a lot of credit to those folks. And it may lessen over time, but he's the immediate former president. And it ages on his side, and the demand for his time is still pretty high. It's probably different now. He left office in January of 2009. and yeah.

You know there's been several presidents in between not unlike hate carter at the end and bush 41 at the end president clinton now you know that's just it's just different you know it looks looks different when i got to rtc the rally training center in 2010 one of the first things i did and for two years went down and trained bicycle riders on the detail yeah uh you know they would send some guys down there and jason blide and keith thorne did a fantastic job

you know did a great job keeping that up but they sent us down to train new guys who wanted to go to the bush detail and then but the the rule of the bush detail is man if you want to be here and you really want to contribute we need you to ride a bike yeah and it's a mountain bike it's not a yeah we're not going on a 10 mile road bike like no no we're going to go on a mountain bike and and and there's no messing around i was on the bike detail for bush when he was in the white house

and there was no shortage of foreign leaders or military folks who came to ride with him. And one of my all-time favorites was when General Petraeus came to ride with him. And they went to Fort Belvoir and, you know, the president has, you know, hey, the best bike of the best of bikes, you know, and he's ridden with Lance Armstrong and Trek has given him a bike and, you know, foreign leaders come over and they give him a bike as a gift and, you know, however that works.

General Petraeus shows up on what i can only describe as some sort of puffy hybrid of a of a bike and he's got his army pt shorts on and his army shirt and you know president's like you you ready to go i guess yeah like let's get it on and it was two bulls man going head to head oh yeah oh my dude i we were it was me john petrie and i think jason lynch were the cyclists that day these guys by the way all great dudes and we're like and and hey listen it's a special moment when a guy says

listen i need someone else to take the to take the tire you know and ride behind the president because i'm getting smoked and again like you said hey if i'm riding at 90 for you know 15 miles you know i mean i'm not going to be very much help if something happens the and and you know we get to the top of the sale where you know people usually stop and and the president looks at Petraeus, he goes, how are you doing, General? He goes, I'm fine.

Do not even sweat. Well, what gets missed is the General's kid who was in an ROTC program in college, and my neighbor's son, who was also in a ROTC program in college, were guests on the bike ride. There used to be no shortage of guests. But hey, the president's out front, the detail is right there, and then it's all the guests. Well, if memory serves, Petraeus' kid. Fell off early on in the first mile, fell, broke his wrist. Dude, the machine did not stop.

Like nobody stopped. No, like the train just kept it rolling. And it felt like, you know, we were going to ride until somebody dropped.

And man, it was intense. And so, hey, as we're crying, as we're down there now in Dallas preparing these guys, I'm like, you really gotta want to do this yeah oh for sure yeah for sure yeah and there were several folks that would uh you know i get a lot of credit folks who step up and give it a try and this, isn't for me i'm not as effective here and like no shame at all like that's hey i appreciate you getting on the bike i thank you very much and and all the

credit to you but we're going to find another place for you to contribute in a positive way and that was you know it was great you know so So, very good, yeah. Very good, very good assignment all the way around. You know, it was so good, you know, we stuck around. And at this point in time, of course, the wife you mentioned, you know, she's putting roots down. And, you know. Going back to the number of times I mentioned your wife. Messing my discomfort. Listen, I'm texting her. She is

fine with this. She has no issues with me mentioning her on this podcast. Right, exactly. Oh, boy, right.

And so, yeah, great, great assignment. Really good. But, you know, like I said, a lot of chance, a good chance to be creative, to learn some new things and try some new things and experiment with staffing and trying to reduce that load I mentioned earlier on the agents, right? Because, and let's not forget, as people transfer in, transfer off. You know, on a big, big detail, you don't even notice that, right?

You know, on a big shift, you don't even notice that someone, hey, do you want, can I, can I move my transfer date up a little bit to get my kids in school at a better time? Sure, no problem. Well, on a small detail or smaller detail, right, that has a ripple impact that impacts lots of folks.

And so we, I've spent a lot of my time thinking about how to reduce that pain on the folks that were there, because that's, you know, that's, that's one of the reasons why people have left, I think, historically, is that the quality of life can be really tough at certain points. And we were maybe not as sensitive to that as we should have been. I'm maybe underselling that a little bit. But I think that that's important.

And I think that's where I spend a lot of my time is, hey, how do we get the mission done and improve quality of life where we can, even with the limitations we have on us? So a lot of time doing that. That's interesting. There are a lot of manager positions in the Secret Service and some who don't manage any people. Yeah. Programs, right? Yeah, right. They manage programs. All of your management experience, man, is really frontline.

And so you are ASAC at the Bush detail, right? At George Bush division. Then you become the deputy special agent in charge. Then you go on to the special agent in charge of St. Louis. Right. Man, I don't know that I've had another guess, maybe to better answer this question.

What is leadership like in the Secret Service as a frontline leader, man? Because from my vantage point, you have a great crop of very... Educated, knowledgeable, motivated people, I think people from the outside would look in and go, oh man, it's got to be the easiest group of people ever to manage. Yeah, very interesting. But that's not the case. And it never is the case. And I don't mean that to be in any negative. I'm just saying human beings are unique and they're different.

And the demands of this job are like, I mean, of course, we all think this. Let's all pat ourselves in the back, right? That's awesome. But the fact of the matter is this job is legit demanding, right? So there are 1811 jobs that are Monday through Friday, work from home. Those are great jobs, no problem there. But our job just isn't that, and it never will be that, right? And it just can't be that. And so we have a workforce that comes in, plus you're in your 20s, maybe your family isn't set.

The things that you want to do for your career are there in front of you, but that might change as your life circumstance changes, right? That's right. You're 30, you have kids, you know, your family grows, you know, and that type of thing. You know, sometimes the things that you want in life change a little bit, right? And so the service needs to be kind of sensitive to that issue, I think, especially with the new generation of, I think people say that all the time, right?

The people that hired us, Des Scanlon said about my generation, the new generation, you know, he was talking about that. But I think that's important, right? Because, you know, the job is very demanding. And I really feel like taking care of your folks is a critical piece of that leadership, because it's something that maybe we haven't done as well in the past that maybe we should have. And I think it all comes down to staffing and size of the agency in general.

And again, I don't want to get outside of my expertise here too much. But I feel like a lot of folks are like, hey, I just can't do another trip. I just, I have to, you know, I have to, you know, I'm, I'm, I can only sacrifice so much. And, and, and there's a truism to that. Like when I was young and single, I was like, ah, come on, suck it up, you know, kind of thing. And embarrassingly, I say that now, like, look at that.

Hopefully all of us that are 50 something and they look back at our 20 something and, and almost everything I said was embarrassing, right? You know, something I said, it wasn't embarrassing, but, you know, now, you know, the agency has to think about that and has to say, okay, you know. What resources do we really need to get this done without just destroying our workforce and really, really making them, putting them, you know,

I don't want to say put them on a pedestal. That might be a little bit too much touchy-feely. But at the end of the day, we all have our breaking points. We're all a little bit different on that, too, right? And so I was in Office of Protective Operations from 05020 straight. So, you know, and that was my own choice. I'm not, this wasn't the service. You know, I happened to gravitate towards those assignments. It worked for me and my family.

It doesn't work for just about everybody else, you know? And so, the INV or headquarters assignments or training that is critically important, but also maybe not as demanding from a time perspective, right? And so... Yeah, you mentioned Office of Protective Operations and the scheduling. The scheduling alone, you know, your schedule comes out on a Friday and it goes through the following Friday.

So one week at a time. And so imagine living 15 years like that where you don't know what next week's days off are going to be. Hell, you don't know what Saturday looks like for you. Now, if you're maybe a smaller detail or you're the boss, you're going to know exactly what it looks like. But yeah, you really don't know until Friday. And so, hey, are you going to be at the kids swim meet this weekend? I don't know. I'll tell you on Friday by noon.

And that can be very tough. No question about it. I think it probably is one of the most challenging parts of our job. And I think it's, and I think, look, everyone has an answer, right? Everyone has answers to these things, right? But it seems to be a problem that kind of goes on. But I think there's some smart folks that are thinking about it now that are looking to fix some of these issues. And I think a lot of it has to do with the size of our agency in general, right?

We just need more resources, more blood in the body, as they say. Again, I could be wrong, but ultimately, smarter people than me are on this. Our finest plans are on it as we're saying. Well, you either need more bodies or fewer protectees. Well, I look, I mean, look, I mean, I, you know, you elect them, we protect them, right? So, I mean, ultimately, we don't make that determination. So, I've heard that argument a lot, of course, right?

But my humble comeback to that is, okay, well, you know, who's going to step forward to the person that authorizes that protection and says, sir or ma'am, you know, is this person really important to you? Is this person really important? We don't think this person is important. That's an awkward conversation to have. I certainly have never been in a situation like that, nor do I, you know, thankfully, I never had to be in that spot. But I just think that's a tough ask.

You know, sometimes you have to solve problems and you know that this is a fixed part of that equation. You can't really adjust that. Sure. Sure. And again, no ill will toward, you know, the Secretary of Treasury. But there are Treasury agents who could probably protect the Secretary of Treasury. Yeah. And we can get those bodies back. There are adjustments we made post 9-11 to non-Cabinet-level members that maybe we can reevaluate. Whatever.

Fair point. And I think maybe three or four years ago, I would have been more willing to kind of go along with that. But I think if you look at the threat landscape today, I mean, I think the world is getting hotter, not colder, right? And I know it's a kind of a finger in the sky, like see which way the wind's blowing. So we've seen targeted violence now increasing, not decreasing. And I think now if not, it's going to be less, it's time to warm.

Well, and not that it doesn't have to be, or that they shouldn't.

Have protection but does it have to be the secret service yeah yeah for some of these you know um it's interesting we always hear that like you know hey what do we need you know maybe another another agency could do this another something this i think i i constantly get you know reminded or i constantly get you know i have this discussion with other leaders and other agencies hey we could do that okay i don't think they have a general idea of what it really takes to do 24 7 365 and That is true.

That means Christmas Day, too, you know. Like, that means all those days, right? So, and I think that's a total, I think a lot of times people say, oh, yeah, we could do that. We could take it over. And I'm just like, eh, you know, be careful what you ask for, right? For sure. For sure. And there's another component, another factor in that is what was referred to in Mark Leibovich's This Town. It was a great book about Inside the Beltway. And he calls it Earpiece Envy.

And, hey, how big of a deal are you in D.C.? It can be measured by how many dudes with earpieces you have around you. Are you two suburban importance? Are you a three suburban importance? Right. A little earpiece envy. And then, hey, who's wearing the earpiece? Is it Secret Service, which is our top tier guys? Is it your own department guys, or are they hired contractors? And so I think there's a little bit of narcissism attached to who's protecting.

And so I think to your point, we may want to get rid of it, but the protectees won't want to get rid of us because of the status that, you know, the agency brings. Yeah. And I would say, look, thankfully, I never was in a position where I had to have those political type discussions. And I know we try as an agency to stay nonpolitical or apolitical, of course, for obvious reasons. But, you know, ultimately, it's, you know, I never had to go down that path,

but I can see where you're going with it. you know, over a beverage, it's a great conversation, but in reality, I don't see a whole lot of that. It's tough, yeah, right, yeah. So we're just gonna have to hire more qualified agents. Yeah, which is a challenge in and of itself, right? And I know you're training, you have such a strong training background. And you know, when I would be in St. Louis, we would get new agents, we would get folks, and you try and help guide them and teach them.

You know, it's, you know, you can't just, you can't just pull these people out of thin air, right? You know, it takes a special person, you know, a fully committed person, and it takes a year or so, however long, you know, the training pipeline is to get these folks up and ready. And then that's just for day one ready. That's not like, you know, experience level ready, of course, right? That's not we can drop you in airspace security. Yeah, yeah.

That's not where we can just, you can just do, hey, we're going to send, you're going to do the president to Paris or something like that. That's a totally different level of expertise and experience, right, frankly. and just, that takes time, right? Yeah. So like a fine wine, it takes a couple years to get that right.

Well, in that fine wine analogy, man, that's the real... I think, devastating part of the hemorrhaging of agents, man, because you'll get you'll get guys six years on the job and then they just leave and you're like, dang it, man, that's you're starting to age, you know, that the greats are starting to turn and and then they leave. And that's that's devastating to the culture. Yeah, I will say this, though. I am ruthless. I'm a ruthless advocator for the agency.

I try and recruit everywhere I go. I try and, you know, whether it's, you know, whether fraternity events or whether it's just folks, you know, my kids, my sons, my daughters, age, classes, you know, we talk about this, this conversation may come up, and I'm a ruthless promoter for the agency. And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm transparent about the, the, the, the negatives, right? And the pitfall, I'm like, Hey, this is, this is the pluses, but this is the minuses. It's not for everybody.

But if you're interested, there's no better career in my humble opinion than, than the Secret Service. And so, uh, you know, but, and my son had no interest in it, right. Until the assassination attempt of then candidate prompt, of course. And it was after that, then it really kind of came front and center. Of course, it was in the news cycle everywhere. And of course, our kids, we're not cool at all once you, it doesn't matter what you do.

You could be the director of the agency or you can, you know, it doesn't matter. You're just like, you know, it doesn't matter. But in the aftermath of that, I think it really brought, for my son anyway, who was 17 at the time. Said like, you know, hey, this is, you know, he started asking more poignant questions about, you know, about how we do stuff, what happens, you know, and I think, you know, certainly I did never push him that way to begin with.

But now I'm starting to gently recruit the young man, you know. And I'm trying to kind of groom the next generation, I hope so. Yeah. So we'll see. That's cool. You had, when it comes to leadership, two other really... Interesting opportunities and the Secret Service sent you to the Naval Postgraduate School. Yeah. Yeah, it was a great assignment. I shouldn't say assignment because it was collateral.

It was a collateral duty. So I was still at the George Bush detail as the deputy sack. But I was taking this program at the Naval Postgraduate School. It was based in Monterey, California. So somebody had to go out there. And so I stepped on that grenade for everybody. And so, yeah, so it was a two-year program. And it was really unique because it was local, state, and federal leaders, you know, mid-career to, you know, like, senior-ish, right?

And local, state, federal partners came together, went through the program. The program was fantastic. It was, you know, it was not a gentleman's course, per se. Like, there was a, you know, it was a thesis-required program, which not every senior executive kind of program is. So, it was arduous, I would say. Yeah. And especially, you know, you're, you know, I was a little younger than I am now, but, you know, you haven't done any real academic research in a while.

So, you know, I know you'd like to think you're as sharp as you were when you were 20 or whatever, but, you know, we're just not. And so I remember getting the book list before we even showed up and it was like 20 books. And I was like, oh, boy. Right. And that was the only one could talk about where it was like, like, oh, my gosh, these books, it was so creative. And, of course, some of them read every page of every book.

Right. You know, these are relatively high achieving folks, they're captains, they're deputy chiefs, chiefs on many occasions from fire, life safety, and law enforcement. And some folks read none of it and they're like, no, I'm good. I'm good. We're going to just see how this goes. And it was a great program. It honestly changed my life. I'm going to say this, like my professional life, it changed my professional life. I'm going to tell you why. It's because.

I was so focused for so long on doing the job, right? Whatever that was in front of us, right? You know, that I wasn't curious, you know? I was very narrow track, right? Then airspace opened my eyes a little bit. Naval postgraduate school, they forced me to open my eyes, right? To think about, hey, when the president comes to town, what does that do to the city of Miami?

Right now, we obviously think about that, of course. But now I'm sitting there having dinner with the chief of Miami, and he's saying, or she's saying, well you know when you come to my town it's awesome we love it the mayor's happy everyone's happy you know however right i i you know i have x y and z problems right and we actually get to hash those out and really think about them from a 360 perspective right you know and it's a great program i highly recommend it if if anyone's listening

from the service now naval postgraduate school master's degree program is fantastic i went i went from reading essentially box scores for my beloved Boston Red Sox, you know. And now St. Louis Cardinals, by the way. I've adopted my national team, of course. But, you know, box scores were about what I was reading. And now I'm much more interested in the world. And I, you know, for those, it's not on camera, but you can see the books behind you, Jim.

You know, I'm much more interested in the world and much more curious about stuff outside of maybe my lane. And the program's fantastic. I highly recommend it. I wrote a thesis. If you can't sleep at night, I highly recommend it. I will put you out. I print you. It's like 90 pages, but I guarantee you'll never see double digits. You'll never see 10, but it was a lot of work and it was really well worth it. And I was able to bring some of that back to the service as well.

Some of those ideas, some of that research with some successes and some failures, but ultimately you got to try new things, right? But it was a great program. And I highly recommend, I know you also did something similar when you're in DC, you know, which one was that? So, yeah, I did the Naval War College out at Fort Meade and a couple classes at Annapolis.

And again, a master's program for the Naval War College. But I guess my point in bringing that up is in the federal government, there are plenty of continuing education opportunities. And sometimes, man, you are vetted and selected to get to go. And sometimes you get to sign up because it's right down the street. And they're of no cost to us, which is great.

The, you know, the box of books arrives at your door. And I think, you know, similar to you, man, I'm gung-ho, I'm fired up to do this until I find myself in that class that first day. And I'm like, I am... 41. And I haven't written a paper in a very long time. And like, man, I don't know if I'm going to be good at this. Yeah, GPT too. So there's no cheating. No cheating. Yeah, no cheating. And again, loved history. You know, I still have history.

I mean, I felt like I was in my wheelhouse and just took a rep or two to realize, okay, I'm not illiterate. But it was great because in our class, we had a handful of other agents. We had agents from other organizations. And then we were surrounded by military professionals because the military, the professional military education, that's a requirement for them to get promoted.

And so the guys who can't go to the war college, say for full time, and every branch has their own war college, would come and do this at night with us. And phenomenal, wonderful military officers who are coming to get this done. And yeah, and I think it makes you more appreciative of our impact on other people. Hey, what happens when I spend another hour on the ground in your city, in Miami?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think the thing for guys who worked for you after that time, I will vouch for your character. In the number of conversations we had about leadership challenges you were facing, whether it was on the detail from guys below or maybe the occasional people up, man, there was never a, I'm frustrated, I hate them, why don't they just shut up and do their job? Maybe not never, but almost never. But it was a real effort to address the root

cause of, hey, what's the challenge here, man? If it's a scheduling thing, how can I get more people here in a place that has X, Y, and Z challenges? And it was always big picture problem solving for the holistic good of, hey, mission first, but people always. And while the mission has to get done, the mission doesn't happen if there aren't people involved in that. And that right there, mission first, people always, I can always speak for myself, right? That was an iteration.

That was a continuum, right? You know, I was born from, you know, kind of generation, hey, it was like, hey, mission first, kind of keep it to yourself, get the job done, you know, see you tomorrow, your paychecks every other month, every other week. And so that's our thank you, you know? And so, you know, but that isn't working.

That didn't work after a while. And so it took me a while and a lot of these experiences and kind of learning and, you know, that that that growth that happens right over time, you know, it was it was certainly a learning process to get there. But certainly Naval Postgraduate School was fantastic and it really helped me push to push myself as a leader and then also hopefully some positive impacts, I hope. Yeah. Yeah.

And that was mission first. People always, you know, for me, came from the Army. And you know so in the secret service you didn't always say it but man when you did say it and i think my point to bringing all that up is i I will vouch for you to the people who weren't for you. Tom was always looking out for you. And maybe unless you were a complete hairbag, in which case it's, you know, you have the bed that you made and you get to lie at it.

And I try to definitely, you know, give people as much grace and benefit in the doubt as possible. Yeah.

Because, you know, people get frustrated. You know, we're all human beings. Like I never, ever tried to like, oh that guy that guy or gal was rude or dismissive or unprofessional like you know obviously if it's unprofessional we have to correct that of course you know like you know i've been corrected before my career you know like hey this is not the way to do this right so but i try and extend as much grace as possible because right you know i i want

people to look at me with that same level of grace when i step on on my foot you know kind of thing so you know yeah yeah so so then you you finish your time as a special agent in charge in the St. Louis field office. Great, great, great office to kind of say just a little bit about men and women in St. Louis do a phenomenal job. They are, you know, like certain offices are protection related offices and certain offices are more investigative driven, right?

And so St. Louis was a more investigative driven office. And so we didn't get as much protection as, as maybe some of the other more popular cities, more popular destination nation cities, I'm not saying, or elected leadership, you know. Great city, great folks, you know, obviously, you know, as you think of St. Louis, it does have a violent crime problem, right? There's no question about it. It's real.

It's not a media-driven narrative. It is a real thing. I lived it, you know, I saw it, you know.

And the office there does some phenomenal work, and I couldn't even sit here and have this discussion with you, Jim, and not mention the great work that the men and women in St. Louis are doing right now to combat violent crime in that city, working with our local and state partners, of course, hand in glove and trying to, and it's not something you would normally think about the Secret Service doing, but working, adding our technical expertise and our technical,

you know, computer forensic capability, whether it be cell phone or laptop, who has a laptop these days, of course, but it's all, it's all cell phone driven, but, but partnering with our locals, our local brothers and sisters there to combat violent crime And it was very rewarding to watch that in action. And there are several folks out there. Jason Davis does a phenomenal job. And I know Jason, he's a phenomenal guy. And he's just tremendous.

And so, again, I don't want to come on here and just talk about protection all the time because a lot of the great impacts that are getting done by those folks there in St. Louis. Yeah. And I've talked with other folks about the investigation side. And while not what we're known for, it was why we were created. Yeah. And it's not necessarily how we're measured in our careers or our contributions. You can find child predators, which our guys in St. Louis do.

You can find missing people, which people in St. Louis do. And you're really not going to get the love that that deserves. Is it fair to say that investigations are kind of a novelty? I mean, it's a core mission, obviously. But we're so protection-driven. And everything we do, I've been told you're going to have to reschedule grand jury. You know, that nobody cares about how many years this person is going to get sentenced. You have to go stand post for the president in a hallway in St. Louis.

Right. Yeah, exactly. That actually happened. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, welcome to St. Louis. Right. Thank you so much. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that there's certainly the discussion of our dual mission. Yeah. I'm a fan of the dual mission. So I know, I know. Yeah. I think there are people like, we should just do protection. And look, did my two cents, which counts almost nothing, right? On a podcast, it's all that counts, in your opinion, right?

Imagine if you were on a mid-level detail for 25 years, because that's what protection would look like, a protection-only agency would look like, right? That is... I mean, if you think we have work-life balance issues now, which, you know, imagine what that looks like, right? And so, you know, when you're at, on a smaller detail, and I saw the grind on these folks that were doing this.

Now, do that for 20 years, right? Sure, you'll go to the training academy for a little while, or maybe you'll do it with some other non-direct protection assignment. But, man, that's, the demands of our personnel would be exponentially higher, and I think it's the wrong direction to go. But that's just, again, that's just me. Apparently, I'm in charge now. Apparently, this was a podcast. The podcast laws of transference. Yeah, you're in charge. You get to your own. Yeah, 05 to 2020, OPO, right?

So I saw the protection game directly for that long, and it worked for me and my wife and family, but it doesn't work for everybody. And I think, in fact, it will almost certainly not work for the majority, and we need to retain our most important assets, which is our people, right? And so that's the wrong direction to go. Well, it's not an opinion born of a hot take or a knee-jerk reaction. Again, born of 20-plus years of experience.

So no, I mean, you had mentioned it in the beginning, but when you went to St. Louis, your family stayed in Dallas. Yeah, yeah. So we loved Texas this much. And remember I mentioned I moved when I was approaching high school. Well, my son was a little bit younger than that, but still it was close enough that I didn't want to risk it. So I got an apartment there. I flew back and forth as much as I could.

COVID hit right when I got there. And so it was a challenging time because it would be like me and like one other person in the office for a while. And I'm like, oh, like, you know, it was not the way that I was hoping that that assignment would go, but it is what it is. We did our best to keep people safe and still do our job.

Uh and still be effective which we were so yeah it's good yeah but uh you know and then i was i was able to retire with 25 years because my border patrol time uh i i mean i had other plans of maybe coming back and keeping going on but you know listen the it was really dallas or bust right and so and the wife said i'm not moving so you know other opportunities were presented that were. Not in dallas and you know so you know moving farther away from st louis was

not that was going the wrong direction. Right, right, right. I'm already missing enough. And again, so it was time to go and I left with it very happily, full heart and very happy. And still, I'm very, very appreciative of the opportunity to be a part of such a great agency. And I say that without, you know, like almost emotional in some way because, you know, some folks, you know, there was a period of my time when I could find problems with anything going on.

You know, I was like, oh, this isn't right or that isn't right. But as I got older and more mature, And then I started to appreciate the opportunities that we were provided and we were given. And so I was very happy to do so. And we do it again, frankly, you know. Yeah, you know, and we spend a lot of time talking about the people and how great the people are. And that's really true. And when the agency's bad, man, it's not the agency. Like, the Secret Service doesn't do anything.

There's a problem in Washington, D.C. of building blaming. You know, oh, the State Department did that. Man, the State Department didn't do anything. It's a building. People within the State Department, and I would say the same about the service. My challenges with the Secret Service are with bad actors. And I guess I'll leave it at that. Yeah, I've got no challenge or no issues with the Secret Service writ large.

It's a phenomenal mission. It's a great place to work. Hey, listen, everybody's got to do something. This is an amazing something. Yeah. And I will say this, that I never pushed my kids to consider this as a career. But when my son brought it to my attention that he started showing some interest, I told you I'm ruthless. And that starts at home. Ruthless, that starts at home. So, I mean, who knows?

We'll see what the future holds for the young man. But I couldn't be a bigger supporter of the agency. Yeah, it's an interesting time to join. There's cash bonuses, maybe the threshold to getting in, they're more willing to accept people right out of college than maybe back when you and I joined. There's big programs out there, and I definitely push some of those folks to try those new programs. I think it's smart for the service. It's done well.

Everything's in the execution, as you know, right? So my fear is if it's poorly executed, it could be a negative, but I have faith in the folks that are running it that they'll do a good job with it. Yeah, that's exciting. So you retire, like you want to touch on what you've been doing since, you know, and you're, Oh, you know, yeah, sure. I mean, I, you know, obviously I left, I left retired.

I, I did not take long enough break. I can tell you that. So those of you approaching retirement, don't forget, you know, you're used to running in a hamster wheel and you're like, Oh, I've got to go right away. You got to go right away. You know, that's not the case. So I went and worked to, you know, in cyber threat intelligence for a national bank. I don't want to name them because I don't work there anymore. So I did 18 great months.

Awesome, awesome people, awesome, awesome assignment or job, I should say. I didn't get the same feeling of mission. So still important. I just didn't personally feel that great sense of mission. And so I did that for 18 months, left that now I work. Do you mind if I stay where I work? I don't know.

Is it okay? I mean, I keep forgetting. Yes, this is America. Oh, you're not classified. You can talk about it. So I worked for a great organization founded by a former secret service agent, Jason Russell, secure environment consultants, where I do essentially workplace violence and executive vulnerability assessments and some other security related consulting work. And so I'm half retired and loving life.

And boy, if I could listen, if any of the agents are out there listening or future agents, you know, if you're in this job, please plan early, save early. You know, we don't do enough training and, and, uh, or, you know, you know, like, uh, we, we don't talk about the benefits that you get. I'm talking about finance. I'm now I'm talking about purely financial.

Now the benefits, not the emotional benefits, but, but land early, save early, you know, when you retire, you know, work, if you want to don't work, you know, like some folks want a big job, a big corporate job or whatever it may be great, more power to you. But I just encourage everyone to, to mine their pennies and nickels because they'll grow into dollars over time. And so it's really important.

So then when you get to a retirement age, if you want to work, you can, if you don't want to work, you don't have to work so you know it's certainly personal preference yeah and that that's another main gift of working for the services hey we've got a pension we've got a 401k we've got you know we've got ways to set ourselves up yeah you know for retirement and yeah we're really really fortunate again we earn every penny yeah yeah no one gave it no one no one gave us anything so

the last question we have is what would you learn any big takeaways you know the i mean you've you've imparted a whole lot of wisdom if that road's already been. It's a strong word. It's a strong word, wisdom. So the question is, what did I learn along the way? Yeah, what did you learn? What's your big takeaways from your time in the service? Yeah, it's a big machine, right? Our government is a big machine, but it all runs on people, right?

And the shared vision and shared sacrifices, those are powerful bonds that you form with folks. And again, just like I said, reaching out once a month, trying to reach out to somebody that I haven't seen or talked in a long time. What I learned in my time in the service is do your part, do 100%, be a good partner, be a good teammate, and then pass the baton to the next generation. Yeah, that's great. All right, well, I lied. That's not the last question.

So everybody gets their bonus question. And yours for today is, hey, what's the Secret Service thing that you have in your home, your office that you see sort of on that daily basis? Or do you have anything? You know, is it your website badge or your screen's blurred, so I don't see anything. Yeah, I know. I have this right here. I'm going to pick it up and hold it up right here, right? So... This right here is, for those that obviously can't see it, is from a trip to

Egypt that a friend of mine, Dan Downs, who just retired. Congratulations, Dan, if you ever hear this. It's my name, of course, in Arabic, and it's a desk nameplate. And it's on my desk right now, and it was on my desk since he gave it to me in every assignment I had. I put it on there. So it is something that, and the reason why I like it and it is nice to me is because it's not light. It's pretty heavy.

And so he had to go out of his way to get this done. And to me, that was the effort that he put into it makes it so special to me. And then besides that, I have my Lucite badge, my Secret Service badge, just treasuring DHS, and my U.S. Border Patrol 75th anniversary badge that is in Lucite as well. So I earned that one too, so I keep that around. That's cool, man. Very cool. I'm not a big coin collector. I have a lot of them, but I know recently you've posted some pretty amazing

coin collections. Yeah, Craig Fraser has. Wow. I showed my wife, and she's like, no. I'm not giving up a wall in my home. Don't even think about it. Yeah, don't even think about it. I've got a one, two, three, four. Looks to be like a six row. Okay. Again, I got so many thrown at me. The only ones for me worth displaying are the ones that mean something, a trip or people that I worked with, or my time on GBD going down for those bike schools, I got a coin and that's,

Yeah, so that's displayed. I wish it would have been a little more, I wish I would have saved more things. You know, I wish I would have done more. Like, you know, I used to write my kids letters when they were really young. And look, that's cool when you're kind of new on PPD and like things like that. But then the up-tempo got so much, it was like, it's impossible to do so. So I will say my kids have a nice box of unopened mail from me that are for each kid.

I sent my older boy a postcard from every foreign trip. Oh, very cool. Yeah, very cool. It was very hard to find a postcard in Pakistan. Yeah, exactly. But I did. Yeah. I have an inappropriate joke that I'm not going to say. That's fine. We'll let it sit. All right. Well, this seems like a good place to end. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you, Jim. And I appreciate what you're doing here with the podcast and everything like that.

Obviously, we want to stay at the operational piece of things, but to let people get out here and do what really doesn't come natural, which is talk about ourselves a lot. And I can tell you, I definitely have some trepidation about coming onto this and doing this and such, and so you do a great job of kinda help walk folks down this path, because my hope is that there are young agents on the job that will listen to this and that will think about this, so, you know.

No, I appreciate you saying that, I mean, you think you had trepidation coming on. Literally had been thinking about this since about six years before I retired. Oh, wow. Right. Yeah. And I, and I thought, you know, and when this person comes on, they will be revealed as sort of the inspiration source for this. They're now an annuitant. So I can't, I don't want to want to add them just yet. But, but as I'm sitting there talking to them on post, I just said, doggone it.

You are one of just the most thoughtful and bright and, you know, professional people I've ever worked with. And that's one of the gifts of working here is, or working for the service, is you're just working around people who are better than you. And there are some that we know that'll say, I never worked with anyone better than me. I was always the best. I worked with people who are better than me on a very regular basis. And I just thought, man, we are missing out. And this is a time where,

hey, in the first ratings, we weren't doing so hot. I just thought, man, we're better than that. You know, the individuals in the organization are better than what the public sees. And, hey, I would love for this to be an encouragement to young agents. There is nothing like the finish line. And, you know, personally, man, there were times I thought about leaving and looking at other agencies. And I'm glad I didn't. Well, I'm glad you didn't either. Thanks, dude. I'm glad you didn't. Yeah.

Fantastic. Well, we'll hang up and we'll continue talking about people behind their back. That will do it for us here on Outside the Secret Service podcast. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. If you are a former, fired, or retired member of the Secret Service who would like to be on the show, reach out to us at otsecretservice at gmail.com. Until next time, remember, what's said in the follow-up stays in the follow-up,

and no number twos in the security room, you animals. OTSS, out. We'll be right back.