Jerry Mullins

Prepared to hear the truth from a real whistleblower and American patriot? Here's civil liberties enthusiast, Second Amendment defender, and indefinitely suspended FBI agent Kyle Serafin. Welcome my friends. Thank you for joining me on the Kyle Seraphin Show. I've got a guest for you today, as we promised for all of our Mondays, and today's guest is exceptional, as have been the last.

Today we have Gerald Mullen, AKA Jerry, and Jerry, you're going to have to tell me why we spell it with AJ when you do the the AKA and not the G, but I'm sure we get into that. Just a quick and dirty background, but Jerry was a United States Marine Corps pilot. We're going to talk a little bit about his experience there. He got into law enforcement and that is now a retired FBI agent. And you live in Wisconsin, I imagine now is that, is that

right? Yes, I live in McFarland, which is right outside of Madison. At work now. Fantastic. And you retired out of the Green Bay resident agency, is that right? That's correct. OK, yes. All right, fantastic. So a compatriot of one of our previous guests, Mr. Sheriff Mark Rider. Let's launch right into it. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up, and what led you to the Marine Corps? What sort of brilliance LED you there? So I was born in Oak Park, IL suburb of Chicago and kind of a

normal childhood. Thank God technology wasn't around back then. We played outside and, you know, made sure we came in for dinner when the street lights came on and And went to Oak Park High School and a lot of my friends ended up going into the military in various branches, Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy, Army and I initially applied for an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point.

However, I was a bit of an underachiever in high school and that didn't pan out, which I probably wasn't qualified for that, but I did get some experience of filling out the various forms and and learning about the process. So I initially I end up going to Elmhurst College because I decided I wanted to play football and I certainly wasn't going to be playing Division One football. And Elmhurst College is a Division Three school. And one of my teammates was actually in the Marine Corps up

to two leaders class program. He was a year ahead of me, very squared away guy and he ended up going out to have a retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He flew F eighteens and he introduced me to the officer selection officer and I started filling out the paperwork and I had the this was during the height of the Reagan build up of the US Marine Corps. Yeah, I was. Going to say what, what what specific year if you recall, just so we can give people time.

Frame, yes. So this would have been 1984 and in fact when I was meeting with the officer selection officer they had he told me that he had an excess of aviation slots. I initially was going to just enlist with the ground contract, which was a three-year obligation. And he told me if you have 2020 vision and you can pass the flight physical and the AQTFAR test, which was the academic test, which took me two tries by the way, Fair enough. How many will they give you? More than two?

If you wanted to, would you give you? Could you do more? Test. He told me you could continue to take it as many times as necessary, you just had to wait six months. OK, the test. So that was kind of a humbling experience, right? However, I'm still a freshman at the time, so you guys a long way off from commissioning. Oh yeah. And yeah, he told me that he had all of his ground slots were filled and he had people waiting, you know, waiting on some additional individuals that

he could not fill. And he said if I can slide you and some others over into aviation slots, that'll free up these other ground slots and allow me to meet my quota. This is what it this is what it's all about for the recruiters, which you don't know as a fresh vendor or even care about, but it's all about the quota. Right, exactly. And no, I'm glad I I pursued that path. Yeah, you, you nobody, nobody gets pushed into aviation Seriously. The other way around. Exactly right.

I mean that was, you know, the times we were living in. In fact, President Reagan was pushing for a 600 ship Navy at the time. I mean this was, you know, we were still in the midst of the Cold War and so times were pretty good. And so of course, I had to, all my paperwork changed, so I had to resign all the contracts because then your obligation extends. It's no longer just a three-year commitment to the Marine Corps.

Sure. Was there a specific course of study that you had to engage into or do they even care? They did not care. How did you maintain a 2 point O GPA? You could be a digital education. This tells us a little bit about what was going on at the time. That's amazing. I. Think the standards eventually changed a little. Bit and I think you're right up. It to like a 2.5, but of course I was a communications major. So probably one of the reasons I ended up in helicopters and not

enough flying jets. But so yes, I, I went to officer candidate school that the Marine Corps had the, the platoon leaders class program, which gave the, there was the platoon leaders class, PLC junior and PLC senior.

So it was six weeks for each. That's really not the best way to do it because you spend six weeks either between your freshman and sophomore year college or your sophomore and junior year in college and then go back for PLC senior between your junior and senior year in college. And then once you finish your bachelor's degree is when you get commissioned and then get orders to the basic school.

Really the better way to do it is what's called PLC combined and that's typically between the juniors here and year of college and you get it done all in one ten week segment. Yeah, and then you and then you actually get enough time to learn something in one and as opposed to just getting your butt kicked for a few seconds and then forgetting about it, right? That's right. In fact, they have a fair amount of attrition between. There were three companies at PLC Junior.

By the time you get to PLC Senior, there were only two companies because you're really not under any obligations. So a lot of guys decide, hey, this isn't for me. And they never, they never return to go back so. Not you, though. You. You made it to the basic course. Tell me about the basic course. Right. So that went to the Basic School in July of 1987. We had probably about a third of our company. So we had five platoons,

probably 220 lieutenants. We had some, including some foreign military officers, and about 1/3 of the class had aviation contracts, just to give you an idea. And we also had about a third of our class were from the Naval Academy. That was a big naval, that was Fox Company, a lot of Naval Academy grads. And in fact, when I was there, this is kind of my connection to the FBI. My Uncle Terry was an FBI agent, and at the time he was at Quantico as a field counselor.

Oh, wow. That's a Blue Shirts group. Yeah. And. And for people who don't know, the, the basic school is at Quantico, that's the Marine Corps base where it's hosted.

So for for every new agent that's running around and, you know, living the dream of being AGS and a civilian, we get to see these poor bastards who are out there in the early 20s, you know, sweating through the summer occurrence of the hideous pack and just suffering on the side of the road looking at a map and having no idea where they are. Because what's the rule? You can't spell lost without the. That's right, yes. I was enlisted, so I would say that.

So my uncle invited me to come over and he gave me a tour of the FBI Academy, and I remember thinking that the FBI must have a large budget than the Marine Corps does because the facility. This is back when the Academy was still relatively new. Hogan's Alley was pretty new at the time. There was no gate, he just drove right on to the Academy. This. Is like this is like Clarice Starling era though, right? I mean. Yes, yeah, I'm trying to remember what year that movie was. It's.

Real close, yeah. So you were saying what? What Jodie Foster was running around? Then our videos come and go a little bit with our connection, but the audio sounds really good, so keep on. So you got to go do an Academy tour, which was probably interesting. Yes, and so and my uncle Terry was, was a kind of a bad ass. He had played football at Purdue. He worked with the legendary Joe Pistone. Later on went on to be Donnie Brasco and Terry and and Joe were I think first office agents

down in Miami together. Joe went on to work. In fact, I, I had the privilege of having dinner with Joe Pistone years later when he was up in Appleton doing an undercover, you know, gentleman's course. He was doing a safety of undercover operations class. I was able to have dinner with him and he still travels under

an assumed name. And you know, he's doesn't have a protection detail or anything like that, but he just, you know, takes certain precautions because you never know if a younger guy's going to try to make a, try to make a name for himself and to take him out. So sure. At any rate, years later when I went to to the Academy, my suite

mate had been an Army officer. In fact, he was a graduate at West Point. And I remember taking him around and giving him a tour of the Marine Corps basic Quantico. And when we drove through Camp Barrett, which is what, where the basic school is, he was kind of kind of appalled because it was, it's a very Spartan facility. That is in fact the the here's the gym had a sign that said combat conditioning facility. And he asked me, hey, what's that? I said, well, that's the gym.

He said, why don't they just call it the gym? I said I don't know if that's Marine speed for gymnasium. That's right. Yeah, No. And I've had the pleasure of being on all the different bases. And I don't know, I'm sure you probably saw some as well. But I saw, you know, Army, Navy. And I don't know, it's funny when an Army guy thinks that the Marine Corps bases are rough because the Army bases are just run down. I always thought they were just trashy. I thought the Marines were like

sort of purposely hard. So I'm OK with that idea. But it was always, and the Navy always had a gentle, and the Air Force is more gentle than that, if that's possible. Well, it's the time the when I was at the basic school, the infantry officers course was run out of double wide trailers. They subsequently built their own building, but that's of course they spent almost all of their time out in the field. Yeah, yeah, who cares about the buildings, right?

Trailers, right? So, so I left the basic school in December of 87. There was a bit of a waiting period to before reporting to Pensacola because there was such a backlog at the time. And I didn't actually start flight training, what they call aviation indoctrination, which is about at the time, I think it was six weeks primarily in ground school, like aerodynamics, aircraft engines and meteorology and and, and navigation, navigation.

And there's a little bit of water survival in some PT, you know, the obstacle course and, and then after you finish AI, you get assigned to a primary squadron. There were three squadrons at Whiting Field in Pensacola. And then there was a squadron named Corpus Christi, TX. And I think we had about 9 Marines in our class and they were looking for two volunteers to go to Corpus Christi. Well, none of us volunteered. We all, I mean, Pensacola is got

a very nice nightlife. We're all bachelors and not really looking to leave, so my name ended up being drawn out of the hat to go to Corpus Christi, which really turned out to be kind of a blessing because one one thing I didn't realize at the time, but once you get to Corpus Christi, you understand that the course rules are much simpler. We only had two outline fields, plus we did touch and goes home base. Where at?

Where at as the students that are going through training that widening field have to learn course rules for probably 15 different online fields. So there's different initial, you know, where do you make your initial call? What's the altitude? What's your ingress route, what's your ingress route and top of everything else that you're trying to learn? Yeah. Keeping the damn thing in the air.

Right, exactly trying to, you know, memorize an emergency procedures and radio calls and just regular procedures and then there's a lot more volume of air traffic as well. So you're constantly trying to see and avoid. I believe that's N Whiting fields, at least at one time, is the busiest airport in the United States in terms of take off from landings because of all the training that goes on. Yeah, corporate sounds like a much easier gig, probably, and Corpus is not. It's not tragic.

I mean, it's still Texas, so you're in America, so that's helpful. You could have been somewhere far worse than that. You could have been in California for all you knew, right? Some sort of? Well, I ended up there. That was my hands, my first assignment. Of course it was. In the Marine Corps, that's another story. So you go through primary and then at the end of primary there's a selection process and for Marines to select either jets, props, which was C one 30s

or helicopters. And in order to select jets, you have to have jet grades. And that varies depending on the squadron that you're in. And it's based on the number of above averages that you have. So every time you go on a flight, flight school, there might be 30 graded items on the on the evaluation sheet. And the first three are always the same, air work, emergency procedures and head work. And you either get an above average, an average or below

average. And then depending on the type of flight that it is will dictate what is on that grade sheet. So if you're doing like aerobatics, you'll get evaluated at how well you successfully execute an Immelman or a barrel roll. And are you doing these? You do these in fixed wings and small fixed wing before you get rotor. Yes, that's correct. Yes, in the T34 now using the T6 Texan, but back then it was AT34, which is a very forgiving

aircraft. So yes, you get about probably 115 to 120 hours of fixed single engine fixed only time in primary. So every time you go flying, and I mean you can, when you come out of that flight, it's basically reduced to how many net above or if it, if you have a bad day, how many maybe net below averages that you have, or in some cases might just be straight averages. And so at the end of that process, you know, you they evaluate how many, what are your overall flight grades are.

So for example, I think at the time, the minimum for jet grades might have been like you had to have at least 40 net above throughout the course of the training. If you're anywhere below that, don't you don't even bother selecting jets. And it would, it would you could get a bump depending on what squadron you were in or you might get a reduction because they would they would evaluate the sort of the biases of the different squadrons.

And I don't know exactly how how they figured that out. It was to say it wasn't really an issue for me because I think I ended up I had probably about 10 that above average, which I was fine with. Yeah, that's fair. It makes it real easy. God help you choose that one right away, right? That's right, yes.

And, and there is frankly, there's a higher attrition rate in the, in the jet pipeline, primarily when it comes to CQS or the carrier flaws that can be, you know, the real hurdle for, you know, some, some pilots are, are fine landing on, on the runway, but they get out to do their carrier calls and they have to do 5 traps. And I think they're given 2 opportunities. So if they if they don't do it on their first day, they have to come back to second day.

And traps, we're talking about what the trap is about grabbing the wire is that. Correct. Yes, OK. I'm I'm not a pilot, but I but I did watch top guns, so I know a little bit. Right. That's about the extent of my experience for yeah, it's my the extent of my experience for carrier landings. But they have to, yeah, you have to grab something, right. So, OK, so that's, so they get 5 attempts and they got to at least get 2 or they're just out of there. They're just washed out on

there. Right. So there is, there is a little bit of a gamble in that regard, although most mostly so there are a lot of student naval aviators that they may have jet grades but don't necessarily select jets. And frankly in the Marine Corps there wasn't as many jet slots. I would say probably 75% of the student naval aviators coming out of the training pipeline are going into helicopters. That's where the bulk. 70 The force was was the was the Marine flying eighteens at that time,

or what were they flying? Yes. OK, so. F eighteens AVAB Harriers. Back then, they still had. Go ahead. Yeah, the the Harriers always kind of freaked me out a little bit. Right, Yeah, the widow makers right, that's a good and then OV 10s were were we're still recourse the final OV 10s back then which is a turbo profit that was through the jet pipeline got it.

And and then C one 30s for prop that was a separate pipeline, OK, where they flew King Airs, they went once they finished T30 fours, they went flew the TT 44 also on a Corpus Vt 28 was a squadron there. And then the the student naval aviators that went in The Jets, they flew the T2 Buckeye. And then then when they went into advance, they flew the 8

fours. I think now they're flying the T40 fives but they would go either to Meridian, Ms. Bee Vale, Texas or Kingsville, TX. Real garden spots. Yeah, everybody's, everybody's looking for that. But you got into Rotary and you ended up flying what I always thought was a Chinook, but it's got a different name when you guys fly them. Correct. Yes, it's ACH 46. I have a picture in the background there. I see it. Yeah, it's the sea. Nice. The candle rotor, just like a Chinook.

I mean, however the Chinook is considered heavy lift whereas the Sage 46 is considered a medium left troop transport helicopter capabilities. Got it. So it's got it's, it's basically a bus that flies, right? Exactly, yes. In fact, when I went through the Basic School in 1987, we were being kind of told that the the gouge at the time was that you guys are going to be the first generation of MV 22 Osprey pilots because the Osprey was in the works here, right. Exactly.

In fact, one of my classmates real squared away gentlemen by the name of Brooks Gruber was killed in an Osprey in 2000 in Arizona. He he started off flying 50 threes. He was AVMI grad and then he he transitioned over into the Osprey. And frankly, the the Marine Corps should not have been flying those operationally at the time. I mean they ended up killing. A lot of Walgreens.

Yeah, I was a kid and I I always remember hearing about those things and I kept thinking, like, what the hell, They keep flying those damn things for it because you'd hear one rotor kicked out and the damn thing would flip right over. And it was terrifying. Just even like I like I had nothing even at stake at it. But I just remember hearing it in the news and just thinking another one. And it was always like, you know, like War 2, the crew would go down kind of deal. And it just seemed.

Awful. Well, there was a There was a lot of the Marine Corps kind of put all their chips in one basket when it came to the Osprey. And initially all branches I think were planning on some level of purchase of the aircraft. The Army ended up backing out, as did the Navy. The Air Force did, and eventually into buying some for combat search and rescue. Sure. Yeah, I've got buddies. Right. The Marine Corps didn't really have a backup plan.

I mean, they, they probably would have been better off because the Ospreys were going to ended up replacing the 40 Sixes as the primary troop transport. They probably would have been better off maybe buying Blackhawks, for example, as opposed to the Ospreys. But there was so much pressure in, in a lot of the crews like that were flying in these aircraft that were in fact the, the Osprey that crashed at the, the Potomac Quantico. I, I read a book about this called the Dream machine.

I mean, there was several indications to the crew that they probably should have aborted, but the, the crew felt a tremendous amount of pressure. They didn't want to abort because there was a congressional delegation that was there. They were going to do sort of a dog and pony in the demonstration, you know, transitioning from forward flight to helicopter flight. And they ended up having a fuel leak in one of the cells.

And when the when they rotated themselves back from forward flight to helicopter flight, it caused a flash fire and one of the prop rotors seized up. And that's, I mean, that's a catastrophic failure. I mean, that's, you know, who knows how many GS in the aircraft ended up flipping into the Potomac and there were no survivors.

So there was. And in fact, I think when Rumsfeld, excuse me, Cheney was Secretary of Defense, he tried to kill the Osprey program, but Congress kept it alive because it was a joint project between Bell Helicopter and Boeinger tall and they had spread out, you know, the contracts throughout the country. So there was a lot of constituents. People in Congress had constituents that were drawing a paycheck from the Osprey

project. I mean, the concept in theory sounds good, but they just had another one that crashed. In fact, Steve Sachs, who the famous Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman son was an Osprey pilot. He was killed in that crash. Yeah, I, I like I say, every time I hear one, I'm sure there's, there's thousands and 10s of thousands of safe flights, but I've heard enough that were bad that it scares the hell out of me.

And every time I, one of my buddies tells me they got at them, they always said, yeah, you know, you don't remember the good ones, you just remember the bad headlines. So that's pretty atrocious. So, so you got to fly the flying school bus, you got to fly the sea night. And how long were you flying those?

So I got, I checked into my first well before you go to a fleet squadron, once you get your wings, they send you to a training squadron and to get I think it's about 60% qualified as a, as AH2P or copilot before you go to a fleet squadron. So I, yeah, I checked into Tustin, CA, which has since been closed, which was the at 40 sixes and 50 threes. The skids were a Camp Pendleton, the Huey's and Cobras and it really a very nice, very nice place.

I mean, high cost of living, but I actually wanted the West Coast because I was single at the time. I had family out there and I should back up and say when I finished flight school, you go through another selection process and you get ranked and, and in my group there were twelve of us, 12 Marines. The Navy does their own thing, and I remember I was ranked nine out of 12, so I'm thinking the odds of me getting anywhere near my first choice are probably

pretty remote. They're like a classic Marines. They're like a Marines Marine, right? You're you're meeting the standard. You're not. You're not making anybody look bad. Yeah. Just happy to be here. Eat the crayon if you need to. Just. That's right. These are my favorite Marines, by the way. They always end up getting to get the most work done too. Well, yeah, there's something to be. Said about that, in fact. Transitioning to the FBI.

Have heard some of the old time agents say the best FBI agents were C students. I think there's some truth. For that, Well, I think, yeah, I think there is too. I think we could probably we could flesh that out, but let's. OK, so you're stationed in California. Yeah, we'll get in and we'll get the law enforcement momentarily. And what is skids? You said skids earlier. What the heck is a skid? So the H1 Whiskey Cobras and the Huey's. OK, so those.

Are the skids, Yeah. Whereas the 46 and the 53 had. Yeah, well, the landing gear 53, right. They actually have a track. OK, OK, OK. So, yeah, so for those of us who who are not rotor heads, we got to understand skids. OK, That's that's they've got the skis on the bottom to land on for folks. That's that's all right. Got it. What do they always say skids are for kids? Is that the is that the joke they give? I know I've heard it, but it's not my thing.

It's just I've just been around enough. OK, fair enough. Kids are for kids. Yeah. Well, and the, and the probably the sexiest, if you will, for, for helicopters was, was Cobras. I mean, that was usually the top performers in flight school in the HTS, which is the helicopters helicopters training squadron. They were, they were going for Cobras typically because it's a gunship. But you know, in some cases those are guys that maybe want

The Jets, not a primary. And they didn't get jets because needs of the Marine Corps and you're going to go fly helicopters and you know, it's it's all good. I mean, you're getting paid to fly. I mean, it's hard to complain about that, right? Right. It's hard to complain. You're catching, yeah, you're catching all your hours and it's getting you got a marketable skill when you get out, if you want it and that kind of thing, right?

Right. So I was fortunate though, even though I was ranked nine out of 12. Well, actually, so the way they do the selection process is this, you know, signature Marine will come in and he puts up on a whiteboard like how many Cobra slots there are, how many Huey

slots. Back then they had 53 DS, 53 echoes, NCH, 40 sixes and then East Coast, West Coast or Hawaii. And so you make your top choice in aircraft, your top choice for coast and then you can decide what's more important, coast or aircraft. I mean, some some guys may want to go to the West Coast and maybe they want to fly 50 threes. But if there are no 53 slots, I'll take the 46 slot.

Some guys want aircraft. So I had 40 sixes as my first choice in aircraft and West Coast is my first choice location. And when when we got done with this process, by the time it came to me, there were no West Coast lots left. So I figured, OK, I'm going to be going to New River to fly 40 sixes. And by the between the time we did our selection and the time we actually got our orders, something had changed. And I actually, I, when I saw my orders, I thought, hey, maybe

somebody made a mistake. Should I say something? So I didn't say anything. That's right. I'm sure the numbers changed or whatever. I did end up on the East Coast, so before I got out. But my, you know, my situation changed. I got married and had a child. Yeah. So I was in Tustin. I went to, I finished my training at the training squadron in April of 1990.

I went to my first squadron which is HMM 163 the Ridge Runners and and at the time the squadron was deployed out to 29 Palms OK, which was only about an hour away, a helicopter flight. So I went out there and within, I was out there I think about 5 days and another copilot came in after me because this is a period of transition and we were going out the next day to fly a, a three hour sortie. And typically we fly about 1.5 and before we have to refuel

unless we have internal tanks. So it's not a lot of endurance. And we're, we're doing a, a gun shoot for the crew chiefs and the door Gunners with the, there's door mounted 50 calibers on the starboard and port side of the aircraft. And they have ranges out there with like plywood targets or old hulks. And it gives them out.

There's a certain art form to that because when you're flying along in 80 knots, they'll try to walk the rounds up onto the target and then there's a little bit of Arc in the rounds. So those guys get to be pretty good at it. But and that you can't do that. You can't Pendleton, you can't do that at camp with you. You have to go out to 29 palms or maybe out. You can do it out when you're out to sea and throw targets in the water and stuff.

And then the plan was to come back, top off our tanks and then we're doing it like a company sized troop lift. And there were 246's and Chapter 53. And when we took off, it was we're trying to exercise radio discipline. And the, you know, the signal that the aircraft were ready to go is when the ramps came up. So our crew chief that day was Master gunnery Sergeant is a Vietnam vet. He was a maintenance chief. He would typically fly like once or twice a month.

So he would, he'd continue to get his flight pay and. Just currency flights, but not but not yeah. Right, and there's a I'm getting to a point. I know you are. I know something. Something's about to happen. So we, we took off and I think we're flying it's like 200 feet in the aircraft commander, because our our vision is somewhat restricted from 3:00 to 9:00 behind the aircraft. So we rely a lot on the crew chiefs for that. And he asked the crew chief how

the flight was doing. And that's, we're going to be Sergeant Silva top Silva got on the ICS and very calm said, hey, Sir, your, your wingman just crashed in the, in the LC. And so we, we started to peel around and the aircraft, it looked like someone had taken a Ginsu knife and slice the aircraft in half, like right at what we call the 410 station. Because the F section of the aircraft was sticking in the

ground at about a 45° angle. And then the forward section hit the ground and, and rolled over because they don't, you know, just landed on the nose wheel and then it rolled over and see shrapnel from the rotor blades because they had, they had a de, what they call a desync or desynchronization. Of course, we didn't know what caused it. Thank God there was no fire and we kind of, we just landed there and stood by in case we needed to do a medevac over the main

side. And there were Marines that were kind of running out to drag their fellow Marines away from the wreckage. And fortunately nobody was killed. The crew chief ended up, I think he broke some vertebrae in his back because he was on a gunner's belt. He wasn't strapped in. He got bounced, banged around pretty good. All the Marines, though, were strapped in. The copilot, I remember it was his very first flight and he was

in the left seat. And I went to, when we went to visit him at the hospital, he kind of had a deer in the headlights look. And I said, and I was brand new too. And I was kind of in shock because the other guys in the squadron that have been around were kind of nonchalant about the whole thing. And I was wondering, does this happen very often? Right. That's a good question. Yeah, if everybody's OK with this.

Yeah. So I asked him what happened and he said he had no idea he was on the controls. He said we took off and the helicopter, it's kind of counterintuitive. You have to actually lower the nose and start pulling collectives to gain altitude and airspeed. What happened was he said we just had an uncontrollable nose up. He pushed the cyclic forward, which is natural reaction.

Nothing happened. I mean, they were just so long for the ride and that's when they hit the ground and what they what they determined later on what had happened was that the helicopters have transmission. So there's a forward transmission in a tandem motor aircraft and an aft transmission. And then there's a synchronization shaft that runs between the two to ensure that because they counter rotate right to ensure they're at the same RPM or what they call NR.

And the aft transmission had shipped the bed so that the engines were fine. But the they started bleeding turns. So just like when you turn off a fan, there's still inertial energy in there. It's still going to turn, but it's starting to slow down. Well, their forward rotor was at 100% NR. That's what keeping that nose up. And now they no longer have the same NR.

So that's when the rotor blades basically, because they they overlap and the rotor blades just, they're designed to break their honeycomb, the fiberglass, whatever they're designed to break up. And you know, the only thing that saved them is that they had just taken off. They're probably only 30 feet off the ground maybe and they had been at 200 feet. There wouldn't have been any survivors and there's no emergency procedure for that. No, that's failure. That's just catastrophic

failure. Yeah, it's so wild. So that was kind of my, my, my rude awakening, although at least I wasn't on that aircraft. Like keep the bonus for the guy that was in that crash was named Keith Schofield. And of course his call sign became Crash. Yeah, well, that's not a, that's not a call sign you want, but that's what you earn, I'm pretty sure. But the CEO gave him, because when you go into a squadron, it's the same way in the Navy. I'm sure Mark had a variety of.

Mark Ryder had a variety of collateral loonies when he was in the Navy. Yeah, as pilots or air crew, you always have a ground job or collateral loonie. In fact, that's typically how you get your evaluations are done from your fitness reports. And so they, the CEO kind of gave Keith, threw him a bone and, and they sent him to Monterey, CA for aviation safety, aviation safety officers course, which typically is kind of a plum assignment.

Monterey is beautiful and, and, but that's, that's a really good school and that's a, it's an important job to have in the squadron's BBA. So yeah, I did. I did 1 deployment with HMO 163 and it's right kind of on that tail end of Desert Storm. So the shooting war ended in March of 91. We deployed in May on the USS Pella Loop. We're part of an amphibious ready group with the Pella Loop is a flagship and we there were

three other ships. And so we have a battalion of infantry Marines and what they have, what they call the ground combat element, aviation combat element and the combat service support element. It's about I think 2000 Marines or so and it's kind of like America's 9114.

So there's always at least one East Coast MU and one West Coast MU out on deployment ready to respond, you know, whether it's a non combatant evacuation operation or humanitarian crisis or an embassy rescue or something like. That and that. Did you guys go float to the Persian Gulf or where were you? Yes, yes we did. In fact, we even though the war was over, we had to have a presence there to enforce the UN sanctions for the Gator squares in the Persian Gulf for three months.

What's Gator squares? I don't know what that. Is just kind of, you know, just circling around and I mean occasionally the grunts might do like a joint operation with the Kuwaitis, you know, like a training operation or something, but no shots fired in anger. We did have a stop on the way where Mount Pinatubo had erupted in the Philippines and and it

was pretty devastating. So we the Pella loop pulled in all the grunts on ask the ship and what happened was that the volcano had erupted and then they had monsoon type brains that kind of waited the ash down and they had roof collapses and stuff. And the the grunts, I felt bad for them. I mean they were out digging ash

and stuff. And then we ended up on the pedal that we ended up taking on board dependent U.S. military dependents from both Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station. I mean literally the little kids with their pet dogs. I mean pregnant women and just carrying whatever they. Just total, total humanitarian mission. Yeah, in our their houses were

destroyed. And then we we ended up we pulled out and we steamed for probably six hours and then the ship anchored and then we were flying in by helicopter to Cebu. And then the Air Force was sort of running the manifest operation in taking the names of these people and putting them on like C fives and then flying them back. Coconis. In fact, we kind of joked around at the time because the Air Force guys were staying in hotels. Yeah, that's what happens.

That's how that's how you do the Air Force. As an Air Force guy, I was enlisted, so I was always like in the crap barracks with them. But like the officers, they definitely had a pretty good gig. I don't know how that works out always like it doesn't matter what year it was. They are always.

In hotels well, I would tell you whenever we did it cross country, we'd always plan to stay on Air Force bases because the facilities were best on that like we stayed at Shepherd Air Force Base or whatever we try to find billening and but at any rate the Marines that were based at Cebu were sleeping on cots, you know, no, that's no big deal That's that's what they're paid

to do That's right. There was a little, there was a little bit of animosity though, I think because the Air Force guys were leaving, you know, going back to their hotel, whatever 6 or 7 at night. And some, some one of the Marine infantry lieutenants put up a big sign and it says U.S. Marine Corps welcomes you to stay Blue Island. And the story I heard was that an Air Force major came by and he kind of got Hacked Off and he says this is an Air Force

operation. So the Marine took his little ballpoint pen out and he put and US Air Force, which you could barely see. And then he posted a car on the side. That's about right. And then and then when it was all said and done, I mean, the Air Force had brought in a bunch of cots and they just left them apparently. I don't know if anybody had to sign from, you know, gear adrift as a gift, right?

So we ended up taking a bunch of these cots back-to-back to the pellet, but we actually thought, first of the time when you only have one or two ribbons, you're like, hey, are we going to get the humanitarian servicemen? That's right, yeah, You got to build your rack. Right, right. Let's get down to the real important thing. You're going to have to stand in front of other people, and you're going to have to tell them what you did with your

service. Can I get another ribbon and plus and you and you didn't start off the way that, you know, when I when I went in, everybody started off with, you know, the G Watt. And then if you went Expeditionary, obviously you got others. But yeah, so there was a little bit lighter. You probably just had your, your, your, your starting to basic and maybe and maybe a marksmanship or something. Yeah. The Firewatch Ribbon. The National Defense. Yeah, the National Defense,

that's for. I got one. Call that the Firewatch. Yeah, I got 1. Of those too, and. The Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, she's a, you know, you could tell a lot about a guy though. When you see a guy with, you know, if he's got like 3 or 4 stars, you say, OK, that's a guy that's done a lot of deployment too. We used to joke they should call it the sea service divorce rhythm. Yeah, that's a good one.

That's about right. So. Yeah, and then it probably also results in like, interesting weird tattoos and stories about the hookers and foreign boards and all that kind of thing, too. Right. Yeah. Well, so then, yeah, we got back from that deployment in November of 91 and I found out within probably a week or so that that I was getting orders to to the grunts, which is a little bit unusual.

Typically as a new pilot, do at least two years in a Squadron 2 deployments at least at that time before you're going to either go to like a career level school or maybe go down to Pensacola to be a flight instructor or to go to go to the the ground side of the house. At the time, all of our captains had orders, they had taken care of business. And you know, I don't resent them for doing that.

In fact, I enjoyed my time with the with the grunts, but I ended up going to Coronado for a three-week tactical air control party school. So basically you learn about initially they teach you about artillery and mills and everything and then 9 lines and calling in air support and wholesale support for maneuver units. And it was a, it was a, it was a fun school. I mean, we spent like 4 days out of 29 Palms, but we weren't staying in the field. We got flown out in the morning.

We brought lawn chairs and coolers sitting on the OP. And then you just waited for your turn. And then, I mean, we had like priority. So I mean, we not only had Marine air, but we had a 10s come out and F fourteens. It was awesome. You know, and you do your 9 lines and and coordinate with the artillery because they simulate like a surface to air threat. So you got to do C ADS suppression of enemy air defenses. And then back then it was before J dams.

I mean, you're, so you're basically trying to mark target with 81 like with Willie Pete bounds or white phosphorus rounds. So you're working with a forward observer who's relaying the grid and then your job is to try to make an adjustment. If that round is right on target, you're telling them the pilot give them a kernel direction and a correction. You know from the mark 50 meters to the north, that's your target.

Old school, walking it in. Old school, yeah, just relying on their skills and then so I got done with that school and I I got orders to. Now do they, do they, do they want to send guys like you there because you had a, an aviation background or was there other guys that had nothing, you know, no air time? Yeah, that's a good question. In order to qualify for, it's a secondary MOS, In order to qualify for the secondary MOS, you have to be either a naval aviator or a naval flight officer.

OK, So most of the guys in the class were pilots, but we did have we did have some infantry guys. And why why not? I mean, they should know those skills as well and. Yeah, they're getting, they're getting way better about I mean, these days everybody gets a little better at it. I, I almost took an A low position in the Air Force, which was a air liaison officer, very,

very similar idea. And I and I don't know if I told you this, but I was an air traffic controller when I was going through with with with the goal of being AJJ TAC. So being a joint terminal attack controller, very, very similar type work. So just more aircraft?

Yeah, a little. Couple couple more aircraft you could touch at the same time, but but still it's a really powerful skill that you know and obviously it's a lot of fun telling the guys up in the sky what to do and then watch them do it and then see things go go boom. On the other hand, especially if you could do it in your lawn chair, what a what a good deal to be able to come out there. And yeah, I got you. We got to your unit.

It wasn't quite the same thing, but, but I went to first Battalion, 9th Marines and that was our brown combat element when I was on the pallet. So I already knew a lot of the, a lot of the infantry officers. I got to know him on our deployment. And ironically the the facts they're So the battalion has 2 facts and then an air officer. The fact Ford air controller. Right forward air.

Control, I always break it down because otherwise I just get comments and people just go like, I liked hearing what you said, but I have no idea what you're talking about. South, we'll break it down. So forward air control is the job we were just talking about there. Correct. But the guys that we replaced really kind of had shitty attitudes and it made us look like golden boys. I mean, we walked in there. Not that we were anything special.

Myself and Greg Glasser, in fact, his Greg's older brother, he was an FBI, he was a Navy SEAL, he was a plank holder for the hostage rescue team and of course he was the FBI. So the brothers kind of just a strange coincidence. McGregor and I went in there as facts. We've been in 163 together and you know, we we enjoyed it. I mean we had fun with it. Of course we didn't have to. It was a non deploying tour but they thought we were great just

because. It's always, yeah, it's always good when someone lowers the expectation. You come in there and just all you got to once again, you were, you were in the right spot. You just, you went in there and. Right, right. And there are a lot of weird interesting parallels, I feel like too, when it comes to like why people got to the Bureau and how they got there. Strange, strange, overlasting their life. It wasn't the first time that they ever crossed paths.

And so it's kind of interesting too. I think everybody, like not everybody obviously, but a large number of people I meet have a lot of weird, Oh, I did this thing and I crossed paths and this guy's brother was there, you know, legacy or whatever it was. But all right, so you had a non deploy, non deploying tour. Everybody loves you. That's always a good spot to be in. And this is prior to you guys. Is this before you went East Coast or that East Coast?

Kind of an interesting sidebar though, when I was with 19 is the riots, the Rodney King riots came up for the four LAPD officers. And I remember it was on a Wednesday and we we actually, I was at a mess night and I was driving back from the mess night, which is sort of a formal. Yeah, tell yeah, explain that for people who don't know what it is because I have AI have a concept from knowing a lot of marines, but.

Right, So the Marine Corps has a dining in and then they have a mess night and the dining in is when you bring your spouse and a mess night. It's when it's just the Quebec, there weren't any females since it's been an infantry battalion. It, I don't know remember if there's any special occasion for it, but we had this mess night. And I remember driving back home, we were living in that I was married.

I got married by then and we were living in San Juan Capistrano, north of Camp Pendleton. And I was hearing on the radio, I thought all this rioting taking place in South Central LA and Compton and Long Beach. And of course I got home and my wife was watching it on TV and I just kind of joked. I said, well, we're right down I5, they should just give us a call. We can put a stop to this in a heartbeat.

And sure enough that, so I went into work the next day, which was a Thursday, you know, just kind of a normal work day. We're in the office, we're kind of watching what was going on on TV. And then on Friday we came into work and we had a regimental formation that it was already on the calendar. It wasn't anything to do with the rioting, you know, So the regimental commander comes out and they do reenlistments and promotions and attaboys, that

type of thing. And he tells us, tells the regiment that, hey, I just got off the phone with some general and he said we're going to be deploying First Battalion, First Marines up to Tustin as a staging area for follow on assignment to South Central Long Beach. Who knows for the riots. So that was kind of surreal. And I was in it. I was in the sister battalion, but my boss, the OPSO told me, hey, you're going with one, one because our battalion was in reserve.

So I was going to be the advance party in case our battalion got activated and to secure like building and stuff like that, the logistical type of stuff. So I remember we had this massive motorcade going north on I-5 and they and that California Highway Patrol shut it down. I mean, at least the northbound side of it. That was bizarre. I mean, I've never seen anything like that and then did. You shut down the five is that. They shut down the northbound side of it. Yes, that.

I mean, so traffic was still going southbound and people were beeping their horns and everything. It was seemed to be very supportive and we got to Tustin and we're just, they were the Marines were doing like crowd control drills and stuff. I mean, these are all 311 infantry Marines. They weren't necessarily trained in this. It's part of a Museak mission.

So they had some exposure to it, but they were just waiting for ammunition because they they hadn't been issued ammunition camp just to to actually go up into South Central. So eventually ammunition was issued. We proceed up to South Central. I was assigned as as a watch officer in Compton, which is where the Crips and the Bloods got started. Weird.

What a weird assignment. Yeah, and it was funny because I did some ride alongs, like with one of the one of the sergeants from Compton PD and he was just laughing his ass off because the Marines actually dug. Like if they found a little bit of grass they were digging fighting holes. Yes. In an urban environment and. They got DFPS in some poor bastards yard. Exactly right. And they were. So it was, but it was martial law. There was a curfew in place and they had checkpoints set up.

Yeah. And they, I mean, they they were sending out Marines, like 2 Marines. They would show up the roll call and the officers are coming for a roll call and you know, they say, hey, you're taking and Lance Corporal Schwanke Talley and Lance Corporal Jones with OK, great. So they get back in the back of the squad and but they're rolling out just, you know, regular patrol work and you know that. So I used to hear about some of the stuff as a as a watch

officer. And for example, there was an incident where these officers got dispatched to a domestic and the cops are kind of brief in the Marines and route they go, Hey, this guy's a frequent flyer. You know, we've been to his house many times. So why don't you guys just, you know, they they got up to the apartment. And so you guys just kind of hang back here and you can cover us. Well, cover means something different. The Rifleman then it comes to a police officer.

So the the two officers go. And this is in California. So it's a warm planet. They go up the stairwell. You know, it's an external stairwell. The guy was on the 2nd floor. They knock on the door, Compton police. Well, the guy takes a shot with a shot shotgun through the front door. Now, luckily, they were stay out offset. They're standing off to the side. So they beat feet down the stairs. Hey, we got to barricade a subject. Now they're going to call for backup.

And as they're descending the staircase, these Marines open fire. They're in a kneeling position by the squat. And because the cop came back, you said cover, pop, right cover, cover by fire, suppressive fire. And the guy, he had his kids in there and his girlfriend. Unfortunately, the the trajectory of the rounds were going up, so nobody was hit. This guy, believe me, he's ended up surrendering in a heartbeat.

Yeah, he just experienced a very different reaction than what maybe he thought was coming down. Not typical, yeah. No. And which we we'll talk about I'm sure. But yeah, when it gets down to like law enforcement reactions versus military that yeah, there is no cover fire in law. Enforcement, I mean, but the cop came back. He had a little bit of shrapnel from the, like, the door store. So he came back. In fact, he told me he was an Air Force veteran. He said, hey, can you track

that? Because he kind of lost. We got separated. He goes, can you track down those two more beats for me? I said, yeah, I think so. And he goes, hell, he's like, that was awesome. Hey, you told them they're Marines. They're going to do what they're told. That's the thing, right? That's the best part. God, that's funny. There was another incident where these officers got into a foot pursuit and it was at night and one of the marines had a 2O3 on his M16 is like 2O3 like a

little grenade. Yeah, single grenade. Launch Yeah. And he he fired a like a White Star. Yeah, like a flag around in the air. Like a Vietnam, like something you see in Vietnam and, and his cops are like, where'd that come from, you know? Hey, you got the tools, you might as well light up the. Area. Yeah, it was, it was kind of fun because and then the, you know, the cops are like, hey, things have gotten real quiet because

we hope you guys aren't leaving. Of course, I think some of the brass started to get a little bit nervous because, you know, we have active duty military getting involved, the domestic law enforcement. Yeah, definitely, definitely an interesting line to have crossed at that point. I mean, and, and I'm sure it was warranted at the time because I know things were out of control, but yeah, not, not, not exactly the mission set that those guys were trained for, so.

But it, it's evidence when this, when the rioting was happening in 2020, you know, my wife brought this up and she said, hey, they, you know, this happened in, in 1992 in California and active duty military was brought in and it put a pretty a stop to it pretty quickly. If they had the political will, they could have done that again. What's weird is that so I I was marching around in the streets in 2020 in DC and they brought in the National Guard, but they

weren't armed. And you talk about digging fighting holes like they they stacked sandbags, which is also like, I'm a big fan of that. I think that's great. It looks legit. They had the Deuce and the halfs out there parked on every corner in DC, but it didn't make any

bit of sense. And then they put a bunch of FBI agents who are about the most undisciplined human beings and the most like just slapdash, you know, uniform combinations of body armor and also the crap, you know, some people have gun belts and some people have whatever, you know, they're carrying in their purse. And we, we went out there and, and marched around like a bunch of dummies. So it wasn't nearly as, as regimented.

I'm, I'm confident if they put the Marine Corps into DC, it would have been a very short ordeal. And Antifa guys would have changed their tune right away. They would have been throwing bricks at anybody. But but, yeah, like you say, political will was a big deal And, and the optics have changed dramatically. And, and honestly, the other big thing was, is that there wasn't news coverage hanging out with you guys there. And not everybody had a cell phone to tape it.

So people, you know, if people remember the environment, it was like, you know, there was a lot of permissibility because there wasn't like anybody was going to find out other than that poor bastard who got, you know, a couple of M16 rounds blasted through the top of the ceiling. Right. Well, back then, California actually had a Republican right by the name of Pete Wilson. I remember Pete Wilson, you

know? Kind of a conservative, I mean those California's kind of a lost cause now, but that's. Yeah, well, people forget. I mean, Reagan was the governor of California before he was president. So like, you know, you talk about the most staunch right wing president prior to maybe Trump even in a lot of ways.

And that person was Ronald Reagan and he ran State of California. And that was kind of a, you know, it's, it's in my lifetime that, that, that sea changes happened, which is kind of funny. So, yeah, I don't think people were as worried about it. And it's pretty funny that, that, that, that was the route. All right, so let's, let's try to get let's get to our law enforcement piece if we can. I, I, you briefed me through how you got the East Coast and then where you started in the PD.

So if you, as I was ending up my tour at 19, I was, you know, set for orders to go back to a 46 squadron. The monitor, that's the guy that is at the Headquarters Marine Corps and, you know, sort of controls assignments as a company grade monitor, field grade monitor. They want the ground officers for aviators and stuff.

And, you know, at the time he said, well, if I send you back the Tustin, I can't guarantee that you're, you know, going to go back to a squad or you might end up at the group, which is kind of a basically flying desk. And so I said, well, what about the New River? What about the East Coast? And he said, well, not only will I guarantee you'll be in the squatter and if you go to the East Coast, I'll cut your orders

early. So not that I was looking to leave, but it wasn't like I was going to deploy with 19 anyway. So I, I checked in the New River in January of 93, went to refresher training and I was assigned to HMM, 266. And I was a whistleblower there, which is we don't need to get into that, but there was a back when, you know, I don't know if whistleblowers are really a thing, but they had a program and Naval aviation called the Any Mouse program.

And we had the CEO like was really, I think pretty unstable. And I thought he for sure he was going to get some Marines killed. And so anyways, I end up coming forward. I initially made the complaint anonymously and in order to kind of give it some substance, there was an investigation that was launched. I came forward, I gave a statement. Needless to say, it was removed from that squadron and I went to another squadron and I finished up my time and I got out in

September of 94 from H1264. And then I didn't really do a very good job planning for transition. My wife and I both from Illinois. We moved back and I had friends of mine that were local like 1 friend of mine was a Chicago cop and a couple guys that were coppers in the suburbs and it was always departments that were hiring and I. I worked for a private security

company for a few months. I started testing with different police agencies and in Illinois they have a veteran's preference for police and fire jobs, so it didn't take long to get hired. In Illinois, you don't have, you don't put yourself through the Academy. You get hired by an agency, they sponsor you so. Yeah, I think that's how it should be too. Yeah. I know it's different in different states, but I cannot imagine, you know, like they should.

If they want you to be an employee, they got to pay to go get the screening for that. It's specialized. Right, exactly. And it's not like it has any other function. It's not like you could go do anything else once you could get that training. Yeah, they do it a little differently here in Wisconsin, but at any rate, I and then I so I was working for us, you know, kind of a small and we had like 36 sworn it was on the line Illinois. It was in Lake County suburb of

Chicago just doing patrol work. But it was a good foundation for learning how to talk to people, learning about elements of crimes, writing reports. We're going to come, we're going to come back and talk about that. I, I, I guarantee it. Because I feel like that's the thing that we're missing in so many ways. Specifically the words, knowing how to talk to people. I find that to be like, it's a critical skill. I'm sure you found when you were working in the Bureau, but I

don't know. You got out, what, 17? Is that right? So you were getting out as I was, you know, just hitting the field offices. But I found a surprising lack of that sort of just basic skill set. Not scared to go talk to a stranger and have a weird conversation. So, OK, so you're out there. You're riding patrol. How many? How long did you do that? So just a little over a year. I finished the Academy in May of 95, like right before Memorial Day, and then I worked.

You know, from that point until like July 12th of 96, because that's when I got my offer letter from. Yeah, yeah, I was in the background. I was applying. I applied to Secret Service US Marshals BEAFBI because I knew I had seven years of military. I knew I could, you know, buy that time back, right, Right. Like I said, my uncle had been an FBI agent, so I had a little bit of exposure to it. So was that your? Preference. Or did you have a preference

based on mission and and work? Did you? Did you care one way or another, or what did it matter? Well, the FBI was my was my first choice. In fact, when I, when I was going through the process with the Secret Service, I had the Secret Service interview first. And, you know, so that was a good exposure for when it came time to do the FBI interview because their interview was somewhat someone's panel interview.

But I remember my wife was kind of reminded me at the time that this is when Clinton was president, I was no fan of Bill Clinton. She says, are you crazy? You want to go into an agency? And I said, well, by the time I get there, won't be in office anymore. But she reminded me that, well, former presidents get protection, too. That's right. And, you know, that seems like an important point. Yeah. Such a good idea. Yeah. For life. All of them do, right? Right, that's an.

Interesting thing. You know, and it's funny because at the time I had this perception that there was going to be a long shot to get into the FBI, you know, because you have this perception that it's this really elite. Yeah, because you, you, I mean, what the hell, you don't know. Right until you get to. The yeah. And then you see all the the booger readers that are next to you and you're like, oh, you're just like me. That's why we're all cute. Right, right, I'll tell you.

I'll tell you a funny. Story Let me let me put a pause for one second. I'm going to pause the the recording folks, because I'm going to put a charger on.

I failed to charge this laptop up and then we're going to pick up with FBI Academy. Story So give me one SEC all right so you probably can't even tell folks Oh yeah we had to do a quick pause here and get some power back on all right so here's something kind of funny what we're sitting in the FBI Academy we're looking through and I know everybody kind of has a similar experience because I've talked to enough people over the years someone's running through and they're telling

their backgrounds and where they came from right the back story and how'd you get here and all and. Who are you and where'd you go to? School and all that kind of thing. And they got to me and I, everybody was talking it up, you know, like I was up, I was an Apache helicopter pilot and I went to West Point and, you know, came out as a major and all sort of stuff. And, you know, I was in charge of the SWAT team and there's this and all this kind of thing.

Eight years law enforcement. So I'm, I'm 35 years old, so I'm close to the oldest guy in the room. And you know, I was in the top three or four oldest people there. And they get to me and you know, I go, you know, I'm Kyle Sarah and I went to the University of Oklahoma and my last job, I was a stay at home dad with them kids. And then I sat back down because I didn't have a job before. Like like in between showing up like I, I basically quit whatever else I was doing.

I was working at a hospital a little bit. And you know, so I didn't I didn't want to give any back on people looking over and everyone else, you know, like he was telling, you know, he ran a a Bureau in in Venezuela doing, you know, for the Washington Post and all of the New York for the CIA, like all these other guys, they're all telling the cool guy stories. And I thought like, what would be the most interesting thing other than just going like the

most low key weird answer? And they they. Go. You didn't say what your degree was in. And I stood back up and I go, I have a multidisciplinary degree. It was in. It's exactly what it sounds like. And I sat back down and they just then they were done with me and they didn't know what else to do. And they went back to talking about, you know, being a stud in law enforcement and working for Dallas PD and whatever else.

And it goes down the line. But yeah, you everybody think, I mean, and everybody looks good on paper. And then you put them onto the test and we're all, you know, we're all kind of in the same category of skills, except the people who've never touched a gun before, which we can. That, that always blew my mind. I don't know if you had those in your class, but that, that was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. That blew my mind.

It's funny because when I was in the Marine Corps Quantico, there was this perception that the FBI Academy was full of like, hot women. Well, yeah, because you're, you're a bunch of, you're around a bunch of booger eaters, right. Like what else? Like that? Like that had to be, well, that had to be what was going on there, though. Like that's where they were keeping all the women. Right, exactly.

Tell each other. Tell each other fairy tales of what's going on behind the other side of that building over. There, right. Yeah, that. That was not your experience is what you're saying. I don't think there's probably a lot of women in your class not. Really. In fact, you know, there was guys I knew that were going through like the Expeditionary warfare school in 96 when I was going through the kind of guys I knew from the Supreme Court. And I sort of had to, you know,

debunk that. Oh, you know, that's terrible. You took you took their fantasies away. What, how? How big was your your? Quantico class ballpark, I think we had 46 and 50 was the Max. So that that was it during that time frame. I mean they were starting a class like every two weeks. This is you know, so I was in 9620, we started in August of 96. Yeah. I mean there was most of, I mean 50 is the maximum I think that they can put it in class. So I think, I think we had 46.

And, and you've been through flight training, you've been around Marines, you've gone through a police Academy at this point. How did the, how did Quantico rank to that? I mean, how did it stack up against that kind of training for you? Well, it wasn't really very challenging. I mean, I used that. I don't know if they did this in your, in your class. I mean, some of the training was good, like a legal training. I I thought, I thought it was. What was his name? His name was John Hall.

He was an excellent. In fact, I think Mark Crider talked about him A. Little bit, I believe so. Yeah, I think you're right. Just an excellent instructor, but I remember I think it was like week 8 where there was like the intermediate PFT in the legal exam, which which was supposed to be challenging, and then then the firearm squad for hangar qualification. SO33 possible weed outs right?

Yeah, it and some of the they, you know, I don't know if this was in every class, but they said, well, this is hell week. No, it's not, not even close. I mean no, no idea what a like hell week is. But no. But but, but it's fair to note that for people who had no other experience, and I don't know if they were bringing an attorney straight out of law school when you were going through that class, if you so, yeah. So the Bureau loves accountants

and they love lawyers. And some of them are awesome. Like there's some really like like gun toting attorneys that I always thought was, I think that's really cool. Like if you come out of that background and you come in and you're and you have the same kind of interest as me, that's neat, right? But there's also some, like real weak, not aggressive, sort of gentle souls that come in through that program. And yeah, so this Quantico is the hardest thing they probably ever did.

Yeah. You know, and then, and then, and then we're sleeping through it. You know, you're, you're getting 9 hours of sleep and you're getting, you know, three round meals and then you're going, man, that's pretty good. I guess square meals is what they say, right? Three squares, right? Yeah, well, my roommate was was one of those guys. He was like 26 years old. He he was a law school graduate but never practiced law. He was, I think, like a valet in

a restaurant parking cars. Really good guy though. And then we were partners for DT. And then when we did the boxing, he had been a Golden Gloves boxer like in Pittsburgh. At least he'd been hit in the face in his life. So that's a, that's a yeah. He was by his son, yeah. That was kind of a public because the only we did a little bit of boxing in the Marines, but it was just, you know, knock em, sock em robots. It wasn't really any sort of technique or anything, right?

So in fact, I still keep in touch with him. He's he actually, he's retired here in Wisconsin now, but. Yeah, boxing against someone who's got a real boxing experience is not. It's not fun if you're not good. No, and I'm sure he held back a little bit, really embarrassed. Well, I'll tell you something kind of sad. We had a, we had the, you know, the padded rooms. So for people that don't know, they pad up somebody's room, they give you combatives in there and stuff like that.

And the old Quantico, they used to do a bull in the ring, which I want to have you explain because most people, you know, my, my air, they, they took it out. They didn't do that anymore, which I think is atrocious. But the closest thing we could get, we had this little gal and I, I called her the, I had some funny name for her dragon lady or something. She was a little Asian gal. She was real sweet, but she was tiny. I mean, she was like 5 foot 25 foot 1, you know, weighed about

112 lbs. And they, they paired us off for some kind of things. You know what a push kick is? You basically, you basically plant your foot on somebody and you send them back with like just a straight, like, yeah, it's, it's for distance. It's not for impact. And so she, you know, we're doing push kicks or something stupid. And, and, you know, I'm backed up against the wall. They were teaching how to like, get out of a scenario with like all the Quantico combatives are

kind of silly. I think. So anyway, this poor girl, she comes up and she goes, you know, are you going to push kick me? And I go, you know, yeah. And she goes, how hard are you going to push? And I was like, not very hard. Like I'm not going to, I'm not going to knock you out. Like you don't weigh very much. So so I push kick her and you know, she kind of stumbles back 5 or 6 feet and she gets into the fighting stance and comes back. And so they go, OK, and she

goes, how hard was that? You know, and I go about 10 or 15% and she goes, would you bump it up to 50? And I go, I don't, I don't feel comfortable doing that. And she goes, I need to feel it's really important. And I go, all right, and so, you know, the next time they go like, you know, I push or whatever. And so I push her and she leaves her feet, obviously, and she goes flying into one of the pillars that they have.

It's all a thing. And she slid down like a cartoon, like she splatted against it. And then and she got it. And she goes, was that 100? I go, no, it's just a gentle kick. But thank God she experienced that because it's like, you know, if you don't experience a little bit of physical difficulty in these things, I think it's really dangerous that you carry a gun and we're trying away from that. I mean, obviously yours was going to be more physical than mine, and mine I thought was a joke.

And obviously you thought yours was a joke as well. So but getting punched in the face is always good. So tell about the bowl in the ring, just so people know what that is. Well, when you're standing in the center and you're surrounded by your classmates and they'll call somebody out or call multiple people out, it's kind of a fun. Remember, it's kind of a sumo thing, trying to come out of the ring.

And, and it's, and it's kind of like a survival thing, like you got X number of minutes, you're running out the clock like so when I was when I was in the Air Force. Box drill, yeah, but it's not as not as stressful as a box drill if you have a hood off over your face and then you know you have to deal with whatever you're confronted with when they pull the hood off. But go ahead.

Yeah, well, I mean when we were, when I was in the Air Force, they always told us when we went to, I went to Fort Bragg for a little while and they said, you know, welcome to Fort Bragg. It's home of the largest St. gang in the world, you know, the 82nd Air Warren. And they said, you know, 2 service members get in a fight, you know who wins. And the answer is who's ever spread show up first? And the bowl in the ring is kind of a kind of an experience like

that. It's like, can you hold your own long enough that your buddies can get there? Because whoever's friends show up like the most number of people in the fight wins. That's pretty much how it works with with rare exceptions. If Chuck Norris is your buddy, then it's a little bit different. Obviously you can do the sidekick thing and take everybody out. But yeah, unless you're a Ninja Turtle or Chuck Norris, the most number of friends wins.

So anyway, bowl in the ring. They used to people and and people always cry about that that I talk about now they're, you know, between our generations. Like they're just like so hard. You know, they punch you right in the face. It's like, I guess you never upset me. Yeah, you never upset anybody in your life. Maybe that would have been a good experience for you earlier on. So you had you had the some that didn't shoot guns. You had good legal. That sounds like that's pretty

much consistent. I think everybody talks about that orders night, same kind of things, everybody else. Yeah. Everybody gets the drunken monkeys in the dartboard. Yes, and I think most people got, you know, something within their like top five. You know, we had people that were from New York that have going back to New York and they seem, you know, seem fine with that. You know, I I was trying to stay in the Midwest and, you know, Milwaukee division was my second

choice. I actually had Chicago was my first choice. Thank God I didn't get that, but that was, yeah, you probably. You try to dodge the bullet there. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and my wife wanted to go back, you know, because all her family is there and everything.

But. And then when there was a guy that was in the class ahead of me that also had Milwaukee and we had a, we were told to call the SAC and he was going to decide where we were going to go because there was an opening in Green Bay. And then there was back then we had a there was drug squads. This is all obviously before 9 above them. He said I have an opening on the drug squad in Milwaukee and then we have an opening up in the Green Bay already. And this Steve O'Reilly was the

other guy. He ended up going to Chicago and had a distinguished career. But he I didn't really have a preference one way or another. And he said I'd rather go to Milwaukee. I said, you know, that works for me. And thank God he did that because going to Green Bay was a great assignment. I mean, we're away from the flagpole. We had an Indian Reservation up there and I knew you had, you did some Indian Country work and it, you know, the front office left us alone. I mean, yes, you do.

You get called in the whole hours of the night and everything, but it's not, there's not a lot of whodunits. You know, the, you know, the volume of cases is pretty high, but they're not very complex. And it's like the regular police work. It's transactional, yeah, transactional work, right? It's interesting. So, and I think this is worth exploring for people because everybody always says the FBI like it's a monolithic entity, but but it's not, it's not an entity like that.

It it's a lot of weird little carve outs with a bunch of fiefdoms. And then within those fiefdoms, there's these outposts and, and, and obviously Green Bay is 1. How many ages do you have in Green Bay? You. Think 4/4 you have four, Yeah. That's a pretty good size. Yeah, that's outstanding. Yeah, it was. That's a tiny. OK. So for people's awareness, how many people were working on walking at the time you think?

About 60 maybe. I think the division was about 838483. That's with Madison Kenosha, which they closed, which is kind of foolish. Green Bay, Wausau, Lacrosse and Eau Claire. You know, Lacrosse was two people, Wausau was two people. So the division was, yeah, it's about 8380. Three agents strong and then did you have any support with you or is it just four agents rocking? Yeah. No, we did. We so one like training agent when I first started his wife was a support employee.

So she kind of came with the package and she worked there. Just a great lady. In fact when I got up there, there was only two agents and they were both Vietnam vets, old school, don't embarrass the Bureau type thing and a lot of respect for both of them. In fact, Ed Roland was my training agent. He had been a Marine in Vietnam and he he fly out, told me I don't want to be your training agent. Tom didn't want to be your training agent. The only reason I'm doing this

is because I found. I heard you were. Yeah. Yeah, and, and all the best training agents didn't want to be anybody's training agent. Anybody that wanted to tell you what to do, Like that's the person to stay the hell away from, right. I mean, like, that's pretty much the standard rule. Anybody that wants to go like, you know, oh, let me teach you how to do it. You know, young blood, you're like, oh, God, like, please don't.

Whatever it is, give me the guy that doesn't want anything to do with it. We went up one day up to Sturgeon Bay in Door County, which is a very nice kind of resort area. And we went out on the, at the time he wasn't, he was the assistant chief of the Sturgeon Bay Police Department, National Academy grad and the chief deputy from Door County Sheriff's Office. And this is, I mean, the statue of limitations is run on this.

This is a long time ago, but we were probably like, you know, 1:00 on a Thursday afternoon and we went out on an earliest boat and drinking beers. We went and had lunch and everything. And as we're driving back to Green Bay, I said, Ed, hey, should I put in for like 4 hours of leave for this afternoon? He said, why the hell would you do that? I said, I don't know, it didn't really seem like we're at work and drinking breast. He goes. That's liaison. Liaison work, that's right. But.

So that's how it was. Yeah, and then when you had to do the work, you do the work as long as it takes and nobody ever complaints about it, which is the old school kind of way. I'm curious what was the attire? Because I, because I've heard people complain these days, you know, FBI agent show up. Like, you know, this is dressy for some people. And, and what you're wearing might be dressy in, in certain areas, Like, you know, it's T-shirts and then Plaid and

flannels and this kind of thing. And at some point we, we stopped the suit thing. Were you a suit guy? For most of the time, No. I. Wasn't but because working the Indian Reservation is you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get. To Yeah, part of that is, I mean, there are obviously there are times when you're, you know, you're out in the woods. Yeah, yeah. That's yeah, that's a no go. Interviews we used. We had a guy, we typically had one agent that was working white

collar. So we'd have like 1-1 agent pretty much dedicated to work the reservation. Then we'd have like a white collar agent and then the other two agents would have like territories and they basically were reactive agents. So they, you know, if there was a bank robbery in one of their counties, that was their case back then. We, you know, we did fugitive. In fact, I think it was a huge mistake for the FBI to get out of the fugitive business, to get out of the property crimes

business. I mean, there's so much crossover and there's so many skills we've learned. I mean I I did some ITSP, Interstate transportation or approximate Trump cases. And stuff. That's like Axel. That's like Axel Foley stuff. Right. That's the opening of Beverly Hills Cop. That was my favorite. He's in the back there with all the with the cigarettes, but.

That's right. So. So why do we, I mean, obviously 911 was the the catalyst that moved a lot of that out of it. But even though the Crime Act, we don't do a lot of that kind of stuff. Is it just the the Department of Justice movement? Did you see that happening? Well, you mean with? Like. Just they're not interested in prosecuting that kind of stuff. So like it's like maybe either they're not interested or maybe like, or maybe there's a Bureau focus. I don't know.

But like like I never. Well. We've gotten just some, we've gotten so like siloed into some of the stuff that people will do. Like, like even if you talk about like pill cases, for example. So like healthcare fraud should be fraud. But they run them like drug squads. They just try to find doctors that are pushing pills and it seems like they just open up whatever the easiest work is and people aren't looking to do the good work necessarily, which is probably hard.

I have to be like, I haven't done that stuff but. Well, you know, I was really kind of insulated because working in, I worked in NRA my entire career. Which is, which is amazing, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, older guys tell me that all the time. And I had really, I had the same supervisor for like 13 years. That's wild. He was awesome. Yeah. So you were, you were insulated from a lot of the BS that is out

there, which is worth noting. But you know, it's out there because, I mean, you heard the stories, obviously. Right, right. But, and we had our own US attorney's office when I started, we, there was no federal court in Green Bay. So everything was run through Milwaukee and they established a federal court there, I think in 2000. To this is sort of a because primarily because of the volume of cases from the Menominee Indian Reservation, that's how they sort of justified it.

But as you know, you don't, they don't just assign a federal judge as all the infrastructure that goes with it. You get, we had US Marshall, we had awesome US Marshals, you know, willing to help us out if it's, you know, they, it can be territorial when you're in a larger, a larger city environment. It wasn't like that with the marshals that we had. We initially started with one AUSA, then two, and then by the time I retired, there were 3A

USAS there. They have the person clerk of the federal Clerk of Courts there and everything in DEA. And it was nice. We had our own and, and, you know, there'd be a Christmas party and all the feds would kind of get together. And it was, I don't know if it's still like that, probably not. But yeah, we had a really good environment and people would say, hey, what's your OPI said? I don't have an op. I'm happy here.

I have no desire. Yeah. So, so, so a couple acronyms AUSA that's going to be the assistant United States Attorney, that's going to be the federal like frontline prosecutors. So just so people are tracking and and we have had an AUSA on

the podcast before. So if you guys have not heard it, go back and listen to Reed's interview and he was in the USA in New Mexico. And then OP is the sneaky FB is option to do a office of preference, which is like it's your 1 golden ticket but you don't know when you're going to be able to punch it. So the OP is something that you list. I want to go live here. And then at some point they offer it to you, usually when you've usually when your kid is like a year away from graduating

from high school, probably. So you'd have to like uproot your whole life and then you don't take it. So O PS are kind of like they're kind of a funny little thing. It gives you the illusion of having some sort of say in your future in the FBI, right? Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. My OP was Indian country by the way. My OP was to go work. You did. That's what I always wanted to do. Yeah. My OP was Shelby, Montana.

I was trying to get up there to do Indian Country and I got passed over is what it is. You get you get another OP if you do it for three or four years, which was but like, I don't know, like Montana sounds awesome. And the Blackfoot reservation is yeah, you do it as a hardship. So yeah, I mean, it's kind of game in the system. But the other thing is, is that Indian Reservation work is the old school detective work and. It's.

The closest you get to be in like a local detective or working and you know an area that you know how how rough was the the reservation that you worked. Not as bad, I don't think as you know, because I'd go to some of these in services and talk to these agents, you know, working in the Dakotas or yeah, the. Dakotas. Yeah, the Menominee's was probably about 8000 as far as

population. And there there might be like 3 murders, 3 or 4 murders in a year, which for population that's it's a. Ton yeah, that's that's huge, but that's that's not insane. And then was was suicide an issue there as much like death investigations? Yes, OK, yeah. And one thing that still bothers me to this day is are you familiar with the Co sleeping deaths where an infant is smothered by the mother and the the, and when it becomes a crime when they're intoxicated because

because of the negligence. OK, Yeah. That would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I only had, I had one of those cases and the mom was unhappy with, you know, because they said we're going to take a blood draw to determine which because she admitted she'd been drinking and that, you know, there's a crib right in the in the bedroom. Why do you put the baby in the crib? Who knows? But obviously her judgement was clouded, but the US Attorney's office refused to prosecute.

And I'm not suggesting, you know, something like that you go to prison for the rest of their life. But there probably should be some consequences for that. And, you know, I talked to agents in that that worked other than other Indian Country offices. And they said, yeah, our our ASAUSAS will prosecute those cases. But I mean, there's always going to that's. No, there's, there's always

discretion in the office. And then what's weird is that depending on the volume of what they're used to seeing, they also kind of adjust their threshold up or down, right? Like, you know what, what we get prosecuted down in in New Mexico, you know, may not even make the radar up in, in Montana or the Dakotas, because the volume and the atrocities that they saw were just so much Wilder. Actually, Gallup, NM was a was a real wild one. There's a famous agent out there named Bill Hall.

You ever crossed Bill Hall's path? You ever heard of him on Indian Country training? Was he the one that wrote that e-mail about Gallup? I don't know if that was him or not, but there's a kind of a humorous e-mail about. About how rough it is the. Gallop is and that's obviously tongue in cheek and it talks about just the living condition it's. Funny, he, he tried to talk me out of it because I was interested in coming to Gallup and working in Farmington as

well. And he ran both those Ras for a long, long time, like, you know, 20. Like he maxed out and did a couple of extensions and left over the COVID mandates. Actually, at the end of the day, that was just kind of strong. But I think I think he's a sheriff out there now, or at least he will be soon. He'll go and run for sheriff. But yeah, it was just like, yeah, he was telling me he's like, I've had people who I found their bodies wrapped in their own entrails and the head

was separated. And you're like the volume and the graphic nature of just how rough the, you know, the novel reservation is, it's pretty intense. And I think the Blackfoot is also very, very high volume for that, which I saw. There's some other ones. I know the pro res is not super nice. So there's a lot of reservations that just have, you know, there's a lot of poverty, there's a lot of desperation, there's a lot of alcohol, there's a lot of substance

abuse. And then there's just not a lot of opportunities, not necessarily. So people who stick around there end up in pretty dire straits. It's, it's always interesting, like when I went to, I work Mescalero Apache as well, and I felt like Mescalero was, was really functional. Like I got up there and they go, it's hell. You know, it's hell on earth. You know, I went up there and I went like, everybody has four walls and a roof. What are you talking about?

Like I saw people squatting in trailers that the, the SWAT team had already ripped the front of it off, you know, with a, with a grappling hook. And so they were living in a three walled structure because the 4th wall had been ripped off and, and it was 4040° below 0. And that was like, you know, people are living in that. So when everybody has all their walls, you, you're like. Yeah, it's not that bad. It's like going, it's like going to do a third world country.

It is, yeah. We used to. We used to do. I used to do this thing where you drive on the highway and you look out in New Mexico and you can always do this. And it's like res or no res, you know, res or not res and you can always tell by looking out around you just like the amount of just trash and sadness. And you know, it looks like they took out a trailer park out of the worst part of Oklahoma, which is where I went to school and then just dropped it somewhere.

And you just go like it just looks hard. It looks hard. And you know, every resident different. I mean, they're all, they're all their own kind of characteristics obviously, but. How were the how were the tribal police that you had to work with? So we worked with. BIA and I know that's not always that common. So we had BIA Police Department and so you know, there's a there's a mixed bag of that, obviously. So they were feds, they were underpaid and they were

overworked by a lot. They were like GS threes or GS fours or something crazy and yeah, and they busted their ass and there was one guy on day and one guy on night and two guys on weekends, you know, for day and night, generally speaking. But as far as I can recall, I mean, just, you know, and for something like 50,000 acres worth of space, it's a big property, it's a big space, it's a lot of people. And then, you know, they know everybody.

The other problem is a lot of them come out of that because the Indian preference that comes in for the BIA, you get a lot of people that are local. And so then it's really rough. I mean, it's like any other small town. They got to police their own and you know, they know all the backstories and everybody's sympathetic to it, but it's like they got all the biases and the, you know, all the issues and the ones that I dealt with I think were very, very fair guys.

Like they're just, they just busted their ass. But man, it's, I mean, it's a rough gig and did. You have dead spots where you didn't. Have any? Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, always that. And then you're always kind of like, yeah. So that was one of the reasons why you're on your own out there. Obviously, mine was 100 miles away from the RA. I don't know what the distance was for your res, but. Wow, it wasn't that. It was probably 40.

It wasn't that bad. But when you're in the middle of dead spots, it's always kind of quirky because this is not your home base. This is not where you are the most comfortable person. And sometimes you got to go and do a respond to like a body in the woods where there's nothing out there. You go to some house and there's no, there's no way to radio in or call in and nobody knows where the hell you are. I used to always check in and

check out on the rest. And of course, inevitably it's in the middle of the night, right? So right, there's like one person sitting at an over city. The nice thing from my perspective, the kind of the nice thing about it was I had a four, at least four of my reservation cases that actually went to trial. So you get trial experience or the FBI agents go through their entire career never being, never having a trial. Yeah, never even seen the inside of courtroom.

Yeah, I got into courtrooms, but I never, I never went to trial. I never like by the time that I was ready to go do it, that's when I ended up getting suspended, which was so sad for me because I was like, I got a couple of cases here. They're going to end up go. We had a couple of them that were going to end up going the distance. I think that would have been fun to do the job that you signed up for and then, you know. Right.

I mean, and like you say, there's a lot of people in the national security that would never get in a record, like they would never even occur to them that that would be part of the job. And so it's just So what? So, and I think that's really important to talk about. The monolithic nature of the FBI doesn't exist. It's not real. It's everybody has a different experience based on the field office. They're at Part 1 and then Part 2.

The violation determines your, you know, how your adventure goes. And some people's adventures are very, very different. And they don't, you know, if it suits you to get an indoor dog and you just want to look at FISA, then you can, you know, then they'll probably assign you to like a drug squad because. That's what they do. I think like there's no, there's no rationale for how you get assigned to something. Exactly right.

I was going to ask when you went through the Academy, because I think something that's that's been lost in this is that there's not a real appreciation for the history and all the accomplishments. Our predecessors in the FBI and they built this organization like the Marine Corps, is big on that. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to know the. Names. And even at boot camp they do that. Yeah, you say goodnight to Jesse Poller, right? Right, exactly and.

It's important. And I don't know if you've got any of that when we went through the Academy in 2016, if they ever even talk about. So here's what's so sad. And I think that, and that might be one of the things we talk about too, is institutional knowledge transfer, which I think the FBI is absolutely atrocious at. But, and it could have been, that could be a new problem.

But what I saw was we had an opportunity to work, you know, fake cases as they were going through the training at the Academy. And so they're giving us this thing and it's like we worked organized crime block of instruction. And so did we do the Dillinger gang? Did we do you know, Bonnie and Clyde? Did we do, you know, taking out the Capones? Did we go and, and do Lacosa Nostra, you know, from the 70s and the big Rico, the original Rico cases? Did we do those?

No, we did The Simpsons, the cartoon. It was which is, you know, like at 35 years old, I was like, I thought I was being punked. Like if anybody had told me that that was serious And and you know, if somebody had jumped out and told me I was being punked, I would have felt way better about it because like, we did MO at the bar and Homer Simpson and the Springfield Mafia, whatever the like. I didn't watch The Simpsons enough to know. I just kind of know the characters.

And it's like who we recruit as Achs. And, you know, what sort of access and placement would they have? And it's like, and there are real cases the FBI did where they did brilliant takedowns and did some really good work and they wrote the book on it. And those books have been lost. And I think that's some of the things that America doesn't realize is that, you know, there is this this storied history and, you know, there's some obviously some horrible things. That the FBI did over.

This over the, over the decades, I mean, there's always like some sins in every single decade, but there's some really overwhelmingly good things that got done. And that's why so many people were so proud to be a part of that legacy. And it doesn't get passed on in any way. And, and, and then it's like, you know, do we have people from New York that are coming down and sharing like, hey, this is how we took down the mob in the

70s and the early 80s. Like this is what we're doing and briefing it like, no, they're not, They're not running around and they're not sending them out to other places. I always thought there should be like a hit squad. I'm like, whatever you're best at, you know, building a squad of people from headquarters, the program manager groups who were absolute studs with 15 years worth of investigative

experience. And instead of those, you get people that have like 3 years investigative experience, put their hand out blue flame into the, into the Hoover building and then started telling people who had 15 years on the job like you and try to tell you how to run your case or whether you could or couldn't have money to do that kind of thing.

And, and, and I, I mean, that's totally outside of the intelligence apparatus, which is obviously it's own problem, but that failure to hold on to institutional knowledge. Were they briefing cases to you at the Academy? Is that like? No, no, I mean, even when I went through, it was all, you know, I, you know, learned it on my own and, you know, did some read some books and everything.

And but I think that's unfortunate that because I, like I said, I remember thinking what a contrast between the culture of the Marine Corps where they're constantly, you know, sort of pushing the legacy in, in a way, it's to make sure that you don't let down, that you can try to live up to that standard. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Like this is, this is what it looked like back then and and that's what you're being measured against. Right, right.

Yeah, I always felt like that the FBI and this included at the field office, it was like, we're already at top. So like, why do we have to do anything? That's such a terrible attitude, you know what I mean? Like, like anybody that self congratulates over and over again, like we're the premier law enforcement agency in the world. It's like, well, maybe you were, but you know, I think there's plenty of other claims to it

right now. And and you're obviously not showing, you're not showing people that that's what it is. So you know when I. When I showed up in Green Bay, my well, at the time he wasn't my supervisor, but he, he had oped in from New York. He eventually became a super, like I said, an old school guy and he basically told me, hey, we're especially in a small office like that. If we get requests for assistance from local law enforcement, we're going to bend over backwards to do whatever we

can to help them. And we open just a ton of, they're called domestic police cooperation cases. And I mean, we, for example, I got a call one time from a detective in Marinette County and he says, hey, do you guys have a underwater evidence team or dive team? And I said, well, we don't have one in Milwaukee, but there's one in Miami, there's one in WFO, there's one in New York. He said, can you get them out here? You know, we have a nobody homicide and I said, I don't

know, but I'll find out. I thought my, my supervisor, he goes, Yep, we're going to open a domestic. And that the dive team that you, they call it usurp from New York came out and you know, it was about 6 guys and they spent probably 5-6 hours in the section of the river. They didn't find the, the body. They had a cadaver dog that had alerted in the section of the river and they took Agps. But hey, that's great for liaison. We don't send them a bill. They can kind of clear that lead

out and stuff. And by the time I retired, the Bureau started cracking down on that. They made it more and more difficult, like you had to meet all these different criteria to open these domestic police cooperation cases. And I thought this, this maybe it's time to go because we're all paying taxes. Why can't? And you think those guys on the dive team minded coming out? No. They loved it, No? They love it. Yeah. A. Couple of on the field for a backer game and stuff, but

that's that's unfortunate. Some pencil neck back at headquarters. Yeah. And they've made this decision that they they're acting like the, the work, the the bread and butter work of local law enforcement is sort of beneath an FBI agent's work. And I don't think that's true. I think that's not what the American public expects. And I don't think that's what we

found either. I mean, like, if anybody, you know, my guys that were happiest in Las Cruces and, you know, they'll probably hear this podcast. So, you know, we'll say, I don't want to say their names because because they're out there working on the street, but they're out there working with the, with the state and, and local, you know, task force. And the task force is in a building that is rented, not by the Bureau.

It's not a Bureau off site. You know, it's, it's this task force, it's a metro drug task force. And it's, it's being run jointly by, you know, members of the Sheriff's Department, members of the local Police Department, members of the state police. And, and that's who's got it. And like, that's the, that's the cherry job to have if you could do it because you're doing real work.

And, and so there is a big, big disconnect between that and what I saw at WFO over five years of just misery, you know, two years sitting in a skiff. That's not where FBI agents belong. They don't belong hiding. And, you know, maybe go get a briefing or something, but not

for work. And I worked every damn day in a, in a building where I had to like, you know, lock up my cell phone and take off my, you know, my, my garment watch and, and go sit behind and then look at 10 hours of Pfizer where I like it was in Chinese. I don't even read Chinese. I don't know anything about it. So I don't even know what the hell I'm looking at. I'm just like scrolling through looking for something in English.

And what's funny is, is that when you do that and you're looking for things in English, inevitably you're going to try to find people who speak English and are American because that's the kind of subject that, you know, I can go after, right? And that's expressly forbidden by federal law. It's called reverse targeting. So there's no way to use the tools that we even had without breaking federal law.

And then you set these guys up, you know, like, why the hell did I have a badge and a gun if I'm going to go do that? So, you know, meanwhile, like, I would have been happy to help Metro Pedia. Like when we went out there, I jumped at the chance to go do those things. And you'd find out like Metro Pedia had like one other guy shot in the neck by like a pellet gun. Well, you can't have cops getting shot in the neck by any

gun. Like, so it's like, let's go, let's go bang on every door and find out who the hell no. Then by the way, you get some of the funniest experiences when you're walking. You know, first of all, you look like me. And then you go bang on doors in Southeast DC, which are like black neighborhoods and they're not, you know, very nice. And you know, you get somebody guy that comes out and you go, hey, somebody got shot here like 3 months ago because like there was shootings and they tried to

do like cold cases. And you know, somebody got shot here like 3 months ago. And the guy's like, oh man, I don't know anybody. I just moved here 10 years ago and I was like, like what? You just moved here 10 years ago. Does that. Fly like is everybody else you've been. In for like 30 years. Like that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. That's really funny though. I, I, I love, I live for those moments because I love talking to people, saying weird things like that.

I just, I don't even care what the day looks like at the end of it. It's like some guy told me he'd only been here 10 years. He didn't know anybody. That's funny. It's. Like front row seats are the greatest show on earth. It is. Yeah, it certainly is. You know, or like, you knock on the door and, like, inevitably people answers, though with no clothes on. And it's like, what were you expecting on the other side of this door, man? You heard the bang. You heard them say Metro PD. Why?

Why no pants? That's an interesting choice. It it's like 3:30 in the afternoon, you know, on a Wednesday. Wear your pants. But. Yeah, stuff like that. But but yeah, if you don't get to have that experience, then you then you're not doing law enforcement. I don't know what you're doing, but you're doing something else. Whatever. I did intelligence and that's.

All it and certainly the Bureau has been leading good people and you know, the the number of resignations I hear are way up and and that's not necessarily a new. I think it's, it's on steroids now. But we had the guy that came to Green Bay who was a trooper from Alaska, a very squared away guy, you know, just a solid work ethic. And I mean, he was a first office agent like I was came to came to Green Bay and because he was a new guy persisted, wasn't around when I started.

He was getting all the Guardian leads and you know, this was a guy, you know, that was that been a trooper and. Yeah, tell people what Guardian leads are just so they can get, because I think this actually makes a difference. When we talk about things like January 6, people don't understand what the system. Is right, yeah. So, you know, the Guardian system is.

I think the intent behind it is probably good, but it's as a practical matter, it's not really functioning the way it's it's supposed to. But it's a mechanism for members of the public to either go online and provide a tip it it was born out of the 9/11 attacks or just call in on the phone. And the, I think it's based in West Virginia and there's analysts there that take in this information and then they send it out to the appropriate field office.

And we used to call it Jason Ghost because you get these guardian leads, you know, Middle Eastern males taking photos like pre surveillance activity of the like Raynitschke Bridge in Green Bay, like, and they get a license plate. Well, then you run the license plate and it comes back to Hernandez or Gomez. And then you go to the you go to follow up, you go to their house and they open the door and they have a shrine to the Virgin Mary or something.

And it's like, well, I'm pretty sure these are Muslim terrorists. So you have to be very diplomatic, right? And I never, I never really had a news. I would have just explained to him, Hey, this is what happened. You know, I'm just, I'm just doing my job. I don't.

Yeah, hold. On. I want to, I want to dig on that for a second because I think it's really interesting because a lot of the agents that I have met that are new and young and didn't have patrol time like you did and didn't know how to go talk to people, which obviously I talk to people all day long. It's my favorite. They don't they, they think they're a spy or something, so

they don't give any information. What, like, OK, so you get that guardian lead, you end up with Hernandez, you're knocking on there. They got the Our Lady de Guadalupe up on the wall. You know, it's like bang, bang, bang. What do you tell them? Like, it's like, hello, how can I help you? And then what? What do you tell them? So you know, I'll identify myself and usually I'll, I'll apologize and say, look, I'm sorry to waste your time.

The reason why I'm here is someone I'll, I'll just tell them straight out, someone called this in. They they saw you like taking photos, which is perfectly legal by the way, but it depending how you know how close it was to 911. I mean, usually they would have a somewhat of an understanding of sure, sure, sure. I I get it's like I'll be out of here. I'll be out of your way here. I just, you know, I'm obligated to follow up and knock on your door, something like that.

Just an honest thing of why you're there. Yeah. So I had AI had this kid who came out of the Academy, nice kid, you know, but like, so many of them just had no idea. And you know, like I said, I'm 35 going through. Obviously we had people as young as 24 and 25 coming through. So I have a decade of different,

you know, life experience. And so there's a big, vast difference between an agent who has five years on, who's 40, and an agent who has five years on. That's thirty, I think just, you know, because they didn't have any previous experience. And I said, let's, let's pregame one of these calls because we had to go, we had to go talk to somebody. I care what the hell to deal with. And he goes, OK, and I go knock, knock, you know, what are you on my doorstep for? And he goes.

Well, you know, hey. Sir, I go, hey, how's it going? And he goes, so you know, are you, you know, Mark Smith And I go, yeah, I am. Who are you again? And you go on this guy, I'm from the FBI. And I go, OK, well, what can I do for you? And he's like, well, your, your name came across my desk. And I would always screw with guys who said that I don't know what they were teaching at the Academy for a while or what.

But your name came across my desk as my favorite expression because it doesn't mean anything. That's a nonsensical thing. And I go, what do you have, like a like a conveyor belt on your desk? They just have those names go across like in the sushi restaurant where you got like a ticker like like like a like a Wall Street and just the names. You just go talk to those people. Do you have any reason why you're talking to me? And he and he got all flustered

and I go, man, it's real simple. I'm Kyle, I'm from the FBI. I'm here because of these reasons. Do you have a few minutes that I can, we can speak, you know, sorry to bother you without an appointment. It's like, it's like it's really easy stuff, but that but that fear of being able to like own the process, like you have a right to go knock on the door. They have a right to tell you to piss off too. That's the other funny thing. And if you do, it's like, well, I'm not, I'm not a fan.

You can tell me to piss off. Like I don't want to talk to the feds either. At my house. I probably would. But but but most people and most people do talk to us. That's the other thing, right? Right. Almost almost always, people will talk to you. I don't know why but. They do. That's true. Yeah. Even people you can morandize. Them. Yeah, even the ones that shouldn't be talking to you. Right, right. Well, the reason I brought that up though, is that this trooper

ended up leaving. Sure. He went back to his old job and he actually at the time I remember he said, Jerry, I think what we're doing is I think we're is unconstitutional. I think we're, you know, and it's a it's a Gray area with somebody post something on social media that, you know, support Osama bin Laden or something like that. OK, that's protected speech, right? That's maybe a bad example, but.

No, but I think it's really important because even stuff like that right it, I mean, they say they support ISIS for all that matters. It doesn't really matter what they support. The fact of the matter is that's, that's what you swore when you swore into the Marine Corps. That's what I swore when I did the Air Force. And same thing in the FBI. You don't get to pick and choose the Bill Rights, right? And, and it's interesting that people of principle always kind

of home known these problems. And former cops and former law enforcement seem to be the biggest, I mean, former military guys have the biggest problem with this stuff because like we're maybe it's because we've had a hunch of what an unlawful order would look like. I don't know. Right. Well, and I think when Steve Friend wrote that editorial about the oath, it's not just the consent agreement to your, you know, iPhone or whatever. I think that's he's hit the nail on the head.

And it coming from the military, I, you know, I think not, not all veterans, but most veterans I think have a better appreciation for that than than what what that means. And that's why like you have a guy like Mark Ryder who really stuck his neck out and and I was, you know, I was in the division when all that was going on and it was, it was just atrocious. How much happened to? Him. So yeah, people, if you haven't heard our our talk with Sheriff Mark Kreider, go back two weeks

and go listen to that. I think it's well worth your time. And Sheriff Kreider's a really good guy and he's a friend of my family now, just because he let me stay at his house and come to see his town, which I thought was really cool. But you guys were in the same division. And then, yes, but you're not in the same RA. He's in a different office. Obviously he was in. Headquarter city, yeah, yeah.

So how close were you guys? Slot team together, so we got to know him through that a little bit and it's a small, small enough division, right? And Green Bay was only about probably 90 miles from Milwaukee, so. You guys are back to field office fairly regularly for stuff. Well then, yes, exactly.

What about like evidence? Were you guys returning evidence there to the Oh yeah, OK. For sure evidence in a grand jury because we even though we had a federal court up in Green Bay, any time we had to go testify to the grand jury we had to go down to Milwaukee for that. In fact, I had a trial one time in Milwaukee and we got the list of that is a reservation case and got the list of defense witnesses. And I ran all of them. And sure enough, there was a number of them that had active

warrants. Mark was on the fugitive task force at the time. They say you want you want some easy stats, some easy arrests. That's so funny. And he said, yeah. And AUSA said, well, at least let them testify first, right? And when they get off the stand and they exit the courtroom, then you can take them into custody. So, OK, so let's talk about

those kind of people, right? And so some of those were probably violent warrants just because of the nature of what happens on Indian reservations, right? I mean, that's just. Well, these, these were warrants from, they were local warrants from like Shano County or Brown County. So they were out outside the reservation. They were, you know, there were state warrants, but they were certainly they were, it was

within the state. So they were going to be, they would extradite it right back up to Shano County or whatever. Well, she didn't need a SWAT team to grab them because they were in a courtroom, but you could just walk and hook them up right there and introduce yourself and right. And, and, and it's so funny. It's like Steve and I have always, we hit on the same thing. So Steve friend and I obviously are buddies at this point because, you know, he, his name went public the same day that my

interview with Bongino did. And, and oddly enough, it's, you know, one of the things that I really despise is like using SWAT teams for everything. I just think it's foolish. In fact, I used to make fun of the SWAT team because, yeah, I went through some pretty aggressive training in the Air Force, which which is funny. Like a lot of people don't know

that happens, but that's fine. You can listen to that Alpha Warriors podcast if you want to hear me talking about getting around every day for diving school. But, but when you, when you talk about using the, you know, what's more standard at this point than using a SWAT team for

an arrest in the FBI? Like it's, it's, it's the standard weapons and tactics, or I used to call it the standard warrants and arrest team because like it was the default position in Washington, you know, and, and then also like what, what was special about their weapons or their tactics? Like basically speaking, like they ran an M4, like everybody else in the world runs, they ran a Glock 17. There's nothing more standard when it comes to weapons, like of any kind of law enforcement group.

And then the tactics are pretty much the same as any other law enforcement tactics to straight line clear, you know, for your front, back to front, whatever it was. So I used to always laugh. And it's like when you make the standard warrants and arrest team because that's what they did. You take agents out of the job of being FBI agents, which is the thing that people always

expected. Like, I know that, you know, I just tell by the physicality of looking at you right now that you'd still be a guy that go in a door and go do work. And there's a lot of agents who you would make them look foolish that are in their 20s right now because they don't have that sort of mentality or that preparedness. When did we lose that? What happened there?

How did that happen? It's, it's, it's funny how things have changed because when I just started in 99 on the, on the Milwaukee SWAT team and back then, I mean, we, we, we would rarely have any OPS. We just trained, trained and that the SA CS were very, and maybe with good reason, I don't know, they were reluctant to approve the use of the SWAT team because there was no upside for them. They didn't get a stat out of it.

At least back then they didn't. And if something went sideways or there was a shooting, it was going to reflect poorly on them. I think at some point that obviously changed. Now they're incentivized to use these tactical teams and these teams. It's not even appropriate. If we had guys that would, that would leave the SWAT team because it's, it's like being an athlete, constantly practicing, never having, you know, ever having a game. Yeah, it's all pre season, right?

We, we had, we had a situation once where this woman named Hedwig Braun, who was in her 80s, was kidnapped and there was a ransom demand. And at the time we were at the state of Wisconsin SWAT, the annual SWAT conference. So we respond, it was down in Walworth County and they had command post set up and everything in anticipating, you know, at some point, maybe a drop in to try to try to rescue this woman. And it was probably 10 below 0.

It was brutally cold. And God knows a woman like that in those conditions is probably not going to survive very long. And, you know, and we were the Chicago division was right next door and they have a lot of resources. So they came up to assist and and our ASAC at the time was just and ask him and he really Hacked Off the sheriff. And like the sheriff had been up for like 48 hours.

He finally gets home to go to sleep and some little tip comes in and he's insisting on, hey, we have to call the sheriff and the chief deputy's like, no, we don't let it. And then what happened was this is back when they had the color codes with the Homeland Security and when Tom Ridge was the secretary of Homeland and the color code changed for some reason. I don't even.

Yellow to orange. Yes. And so it really had no, it had nothing to do with us, but I think they were going to have to stand up a command post at the

in the all the field offices. So the decision was made to send all of us back, like back to either Milwaukee or I went to back to Green Bay and the SWAT team leader for the Walworth County Sheriff's Office, who we knew and we done some training with, He was like begging us. He said, no, we, we don't know how many resources we're going to need. We might need to cover multiple locations. Don't send these guys away. Nope.

The decision's been made. And so they ended up, they did a mutual aid request in Waukesha County. Their SWAT team came in and they did like a dynamic assault on a vehicle and flash bangs and everything. I'm sure it was pretty cool, but of course we had. Nothing. Yeah, you guys, Yeah. You got pulled off the show right before it really happened.

Right. And as I'm driving back to Green Bay, one of my colleagues from Green Bay is driving down to Walworth County. And we probably passed each other and he's going down there to like, cover leads and help out with interviews. But we could have done that too, right? But yeah, sometimes it just doesn't. It just defies logic. But I do think there was a certain level of risk of version and you know, I sort of pined for those days now though,

seeing how. Yeah. Do you think there was a higher was, was there a higher level of confidence in the in the individual brick agents out there that were, you know, or was it just expected that you were going to be able to go do the work like something changed?

Well, you mean now, like, I mean, I suspect the reason they're using those tactical teams now or over using them is that they there's, you know, no level of confidence whatsoever in the average agent to be able to, you know, take out three or four other agents and, and do an arrest. So yeah. Which is funny, like in, in RA, that that still happens. I mean, like the my old RA. Yeah, we, we train together. We train them on room entries.

We would do that every firearms session, which we did every month at the minimum. Like, like like like you'd expect professionals to do. Right. Right. But yeah, I agree with you. I think that there's some sort of, I don't know, there's a disconnect there. And maybe they like, and that skill set has even looked down on maybe that's part of the sort of woke, you know, reduction of masculinity. And that's, you know, we'll leave it just for the specialists who just have to be that.

But I don't know, I always thought like, agents should be able to do their own arrests. They should be able to take down their own cases almost always. You talk to like, Cooper era agents, you know, guys in their 70s, and they'll tell you the same thing and say we didn't even have our plans back then. Now you know. Yeah, there's no, I don't I'm not mad at our plans. However, I hate sometimes hasty. So I you know, so I think I told you I did SOG for three years.

So we would do an our plan every morning. It was whatever we briefed and you know, the situation was whatever we got from the case Asian on the ground. And then sometimes that would change within jacks as you as you went through your day. But you know, essentially it's like here's what the plan is and then the plan was always pretty standard as far as how we were going to, you know, execute surveillance because Pfizer is only you can only get so creative. We aren't flying.

We didn't have an Iron Man suit. So, you know, when he got right down to it, it was like how many cars, where are they going to be, you know, and what our contingencies look like.

But, you know, briefing everybody in case you have anybody new out there, if you have ATFO or something, tell them the comms and tell them, you know, what are you know, we had a color system, you know, that if somebody called out yellow on the radio, then everybody would just work out that if there were, you know, elements that were potentially threatening in the area and somebody called red, we'd come in, you know, lights and sirens on your position like we ever

called it. So we had, you know, some some panic button type stuff. But other than that, you know, having having a hasty OPS plan is important because then you don't do things that are really dumb and you don't end up with people who don't know how to get on the radio. But yeah, but I'm not crazy about like having like a 2 hour OPS brief, you know, like when there's work to be done, like,

yeah. And that's, and that's how SWAT does it. They go and they get, you know, they get all the pictures and then they put all the PowerPoint up and you're like, Oh my God. Like really? It's a freak. It's a freaking row house, dude. It's going to suck no matter what. They know if there's a shooting. That's right, the. First things they're going to look at.

Is exactly so you know, well, the lawyers, you know, they killed the fun out of the job, but a lot of times they also killed the capability of the job because some of the, I mean, law enforcement is spontaneous. It has to be it's, it's, it's by the very, and maybe that's the thing too, because we've gone from being reactive to crimes, which is what we're supposed to do to being trying to prevent crime. I, I just, I love the idea of the pre crime era that we're

trying to be in right now. So what do you think of that? So I talked to a guy the other day and I mentioned it on the group call, but this guy I talked to the last interview of people I want to hear from last week, George Hill said after 911, the definition of national security changed dramatically and it changed as such. Prior to 911, the definition of national security was the protection of the American Federal Republic and the continuation of the Constitution

as the governing document. That was that was national security and everybody knew it and you could have casualties in that. Obviously foreign and domestic is the is the enemy set for that right. Just like we swore and after 911 and the mission moved to no American dies from a terrorist. And when that happened, that was his take and he was an Intel guy also a Marine by the way. So I I. Saw that I watched that.

Yeah, I like, I like people who have a clear understanding that there is a mission set, that there has to be a task, any purpose. And when the when the task is the same, but the purpose is now different than the purpose is moved. I don't know.

Part of me thinks that there's some serious truth about how that killed the FBI in a lot of ways, at least the FBI that I wanted to be a part of. But you got to see it happen gradually because obviously and especially in an RA, it would have come to you last, I would think. Right. Did you see, did the Intel mission get to you guys out there? Was that part of the the creep or were you out in time?

Not really, other than like we did have a special event with the Green Bay Packers. So we would participate in their weekly security meetings and, and sort of there was always a threat analysis that would be done, you know, at the beginning of the season by one of the analysts. But but. That's like local stuff. That seems fair. That seems like. Right, it's. Goodwill, it's community. That's not that's not like driving agents off their job.

No, yeah. In fact, that was another area where I I was, I got sideways with headquarters because I had a this control file and the Packers would frequently contact either myself or one of the other guys in the office and whether it was counterfeit tickets or counterfeit merchandise or a threat to a player or whatever, we used to just do it off. We wouldn't open a separate case file. We would do all of this off this control file. Apparently you're not supposed to do that. And.

But it worked. What it blew up was there was a posting some guy was posting the Bart's he was claiming it was Bart stars Super Bowl 2 ring on eBay and somebody contacted this one Bart was still alive, but they contacted the stars and talked to Bart's wife Chariots said why is why are you guys selling this ring? That's she checked the safe. Nope, that's not our ring. So she called Mark Murphy, the Packers, who contacted Doug Collins, who's out of security

for the Packers, and then. He contacted me and he said, hey, can you do some follow up with this? I said, yeah. So I contacted eBay. They didn't even ask for a subpoena. They just said send us a letter on letterhead because they just had the screen name of this guy and they gave me his name. And I wasn't, I don't even know if we had a crime, perhaps an attempted wire fraud, you know, but no one had bought it or anything. But I was just trying to get him

to take it down. And so he lived in Maryland. I sent, this is where I made my mistake. I sent the lead out to the Baltimore division to go and interview this guy and I even scripted out some questions and the supervisor said, hey, you can't do this. We can't do what? You can't send out leads on a control file. Said okay, sorry about that.

So I just interviewed the guy over the phone, right then the supervisor must have tipped off somebody at headquarters and the file got audited and we kind of got slapped on the wrist and see, you have to go back and re serialize all of these. Yeah, that sounds like a terrible pain in the ass. Of course. Yeah, they want new, they want new things. Well, now they put it under assessments, they put it under like a, you know, an area security assessment or something.

So there, I mean, there's ways to do it, but but that, but you were solving the community problem even like even that is like that's not an intelligence problem. That's a that's a local reactive. That's that's being a good member of your community. So I mean and then. George's point I think is, is a good one. And I think that's what opens the door to, you know, kind of a soft tyranny.

It's like, you know, what's the old saying, those people that are willing to give up a little bit of their liberty for security end up either? Correct. Yeah, essentially neither or. Something like that. Just like the Thomas Jefferson piece and and I think that's the thing, right? It's like freedom is dangerous and we're getting a little bit of glitch on your video, but that's it's not your fault. It's my fault, I'm sure from my connection. But yeah, that's that's the

thing, right? Like American, so American liberty is, is a little dangerous and it and it comes with a little bit of risk and maybe a lot of better risk depending on where you live. So this is, I think, really an important discussion that we're having and just that you got to have a kind of Intel free career all the way up until until 2017, which is about when my time took over.

But when people talk about, you know, Steve, Fred and I are kind of pissy about right the the good men and women of the FBI, you know, it's like I'm done hearing about them. I think that there's a lot of them that do just work like the guys that are in my RA, like they don't have any. I don't need beef with those guys. They're just doing their job. They're doing the thing you

expect. They're doing local assists and they're doing, you know, federal crimes at a local level a lot like you got to do. So the only problem that I really have with these people is when COVID popped up. And I know that's a big thing that you've done since you've left the Bureau and you've been working on it on the state level. In fact, you told me that a lot of our our complaints and our letters are like, they look like, yeah, it looks like we're plagiarizing up each other.

Tell me, let me let me prime that real quick. My big issue is, is when people know that something is wrong and they're willing to go along with it because it's better than losing their job and that they're willing to enforce policies and or non policies. Because as we know, the FBI has like a specific way of putting in a policy. And sometimes they just make it up as they go. So if they're just sending out an e-mail saying this is what you have to do, I'm not going to do that.

But but when people start going going along to get along, that's when I started saying that maybe those people that were not involved in any of the politics of it are still part of the problem. And, you know, tell people a little bit about what your what your state level was. And I think we'll see some parallels as far as what I saw. Nationally, yeah. So I fully anticipate. So I work for the my kind of my retirement gig, I guess.

I work for the State of Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Training and Standards Bureau. And it's it's a really enjoyable gig. I still get to work with law enforcement, but I don't want to have to deal with attorneys or carry my phone on the weekends, you know, and I travel around the state. We have 21 academies in the state and I always get treated very well. It's although my wife reminds me it's not because they think you're a small guy. It's because you're from the state.

You have an oversight quality shirts, which is true, but but I saw when COVID-19 hit in March of 2020, of course the state of Wisconsin, like all the other states had the governor issued A safer home order and it wasn't long before he started to abuse his authority. I mean I think he only has a 30 day authority to do that and he kept extending it in the

legislature. Really, even though it's a Republican controlled legislature was not in my opinion, was not doing their job in in a proper check and balance role to basically slapped the governor back, including the he had a mass mandate statewide, which is just absurd. But that's a separate issue. So based on that and the fact that the attorney general is a very leftist, the anti law enforcement attorney general, I was fully anticipating that there was going to be a jab mandate.

So probably in like May of 2021. So I'm a Catholic. I, I consulted with my parish priest. So it was just very supportive. I said, hey, you know, I'm going to prepare a letter and I'd like to mention your name and the fact that, you know, I consulted with you that these are the reasons why I have a religious, why I'm requesting a religious exemption because I object to the way that these vaccines were developed using a boarded fetal lines did.

You did you see my AI religious accommodation request by the way? No, I don't think I did all right. What? Else, yeah, we wrote the same things. And I'm also a Catholic. So like I said, people will find out that if they compare notes like we, we didn't plagiarize off each other. It's just there's a lot of people that came to these these decisions at the same time for the same reasons. Right. Yeah. So what?

The state kind of threw a curveball because then in August of 2021, the Department of Administration issued a rule that essentially said all it really wasn't all it was only this is where I also had an issue with it was only of employees in the executive branch Wisconsin government. It didn't apply to the legislative or judicial branch because the governor doesn't control those people, right.

But said that you will have you have to report your vaccination status into PeopleSoft, which is the human resources portal. Who knows even how secure that is, but that that's really beside the point. And, you know, this is medical, private medical information. You know, to me it was similar to trying to, you know, asking someone if they're HIV positive, which you're not allowed to do that either.

And it was very ambiguous though, you know, the guidance just came out and there was it had like the logistical instructions, how to log in and how to record what, whether you took Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer or Moderna or if you were on, you had to do an attestation that were unvaccinated. Right. So what month what? Month. Was it going to play that game? That was in May, you think? No, this was in August 2021.

OK, so we're. Yeah. So the Bureau was on the same game, I think probably in August or September. Yeah, so, so I, I contacted our human resources and they said because it wasn't spelled out in the guidance, what are the consequences for someone who doesn't comply with this, right? Because it just said employees who do not comply may be subject to discipline. Well, is that a nasty e-mail or is that termination right? You know, it's kind of a wide variety there.

And it wasn't really the human resources person's fault, but they had no idea. So we don't know. We haven't been given any guidance either. So I just ignored it. I mean, they kept, I got these weekly emails that you know, you're required to provide your

vaccination status. And then the deadline came and went in probably a week after that in sometime in September or maybe might have been October of 2021, there was a follow up in it. The guidance was anyone who was either unvaccinated or did not report the vaccination status or subject to weekly COVID tests. So they started sending me these kits, which I never asked for. And I just once again, I contacted human resources and I said, hey, what can you tell me?

Has there been an update? You know, what's the consequences for someone who doesn't comply with this? But we don't know. And so they did eventually establish A COVID-19 disciplinary tract, like they were making this up on the fly, right? And so in November of last of 2021, I essentially got ordered to appear. Now this is all done via Zoom, but to appear for a investigatory earring and that

was it was kind of comical. You know, it was ladies from human resources and you know, they were asking me, do you admit that you are following the state of Wisconsin COVID-19 policy and you haven't been submitting your test results? They said yes, but I'll I'm maintaining that I'm not obligated to follow a unlawful policy.

And as you know, Kyle, there's a federal statute final 21360 point BBB or something that says any product that's under emergency use authorization, which wasn't just the jabs investigates were never approved by the FDA they. Still, still aren't. Still aren't and still consent is absolutely essential and people have the right to opt out. Now the state of Wisconsin never told people that. They just said you either do this or you're going to be disciplined.

And I started doing some research and, and that's kind of stumbled across this. So, you know, these unelected bureaucrats like Joel Brennan, who is the guy from the administrator of the OA doesn't have the authority to all supersede federal law, but it didn't really matter. So I had this hearing and then the human resources lady says, well, the next step in the process is that was called the investigatory hearing. The next step of the process was pre disciplinary hearing. Yes.

So there's about a two week gap. And I, I contacted her and I said, hey, I'd like to get a copy of your report. I assume you prepared some. Well, you're not entitled to that. I said, you know, I know it's not a criminal proceeding, but it's kind of like discovery. Shouldn't I be able to see? She said no. And I said, well, you can you consider this an open records request then? And she said, well, there's one of the exemptions in the open records request is I'm going for

investigations. But I was on the subject of the investigation. You think I, I at least have a copy of it? And she said, no, you're not getting it. It's kind of a minor point, but. No, but it goes to show, yeah, they're just making it up as they go and there's no due process and they're not allowing you to. You know, I, I made a similar point to one of my bosses when he was saying, you know, somebody said that you said something offensive and I said,

well, who was it? And he goes, well, I can't tell you. And I go, what do they say? And he goes, well, I can't tell you that because you'll know who they are. And I go look, as a nominally, constitutionally, you know, branded sort of office that we're here in the FBI. Like it would be really great if somebody who wanted to accuse me would accuse me to my face. And then you'd give me three options.

My option is number 1. I can tell them to piss off and then you can just split me as you see fit. I can apologize if it needs to be apologized. Or I can, you know, tell them they misunderstood. And we can try to come to a meeting of the minds. Like there's, there's some things that have to happen. And by the way, they could have come to me directly. I'm super reasonable, but I'm happy to sit down with anybody.

But you're not going to let me face my accuser, you know, like like, like, yeah, can I, can I at least know the, the extent of the charges against me that that are being levied? Because otherwise how am I going to course correct? And in the same way, it's like you don't even know what you're facing and what they came up with and what they decided those things meant. So I mean, it's not a minor point per SE. I mean, I think it's important,

but. They weren't, I don't think they were anticipating because because of my background, I was kind of maybe a thorn in their side. But you know, knowing about legal process and everything, I said, hey, I'd just like a copy of the report. So when it came time for the pre disciplinary hearing, it was essentially a done deal. I mean, I did prepare a statement. So I read a side like a four page statement that I wanted to get on the record.

And because my plan was, so then you have standing and of course, you have to be part of a protected class. So then I was. So I was deemed unfit for duty, which, by the way, I could find no definition of that term in the human resources. And it was, Yeah, particularly in your type of work. Right. Like this is not like, it's not like there's a physical requirement or something yet, no. And my health was fine, of course, perfectly. My health had not changed from the day before.

And suddenly I'm on fit for duty. And so I in, in Wisconsin, they had a, this is not a federal level, but you can claim they're, it's unlawful to discriminate against an employee or an applicant for use for non use of a lawful product. So I use that as one of my grounds. And then there's, it's also unlawful to require genetic testing as a condition of employment. Now that was part of my argument

as well. You're, you're asking me to take a swab and put it in my nose, which is going to contain DNA as a by product. And then they send it off the folds of technologies and they're under no obligation to destroy it. They could sell it to the Chinese. You're asking me to waive my privacy rights and my DNA. And so, and then it goes to DWD, which is a state Department of workforce development that that does these discrimination investigations.

And they, so they respond to DOJDOJ had the opportunity to mediate this. They could have just said, all right, this is silly. But no, no, they assigned two different attorneys to rebut my claims. And the first, the first argument was, and of course I was arguing that I had. So that was my protected class in my standing, even though I hadn't lost any pay because they I was unfit for duty. They said, well, you can work from home, but my job requires me to do a lot of in person when

I go and visit, right? Yeah. You just said you're doing standards. You're doing standards in a Yeah, so. And they didn't really argue the standing part of it, but they said that the. One attorney said this claim of use or non use of a lawful product only applies to alcohol and tobacco doesn't say that. No, it doesn't. It turns out nowhere does it say that that, but that's based on precedence I guess. And then they.

Knocked down my my claim. That this is a form of genetic testing by saying, using Mr. Mullen's argument, the government or an employer would not be allowed to do urinalysis testing 'cause that contains DNA. The difference is that this policy was not rationally related to a legitimate government purpose.

In other words, if their claim was we want to have a safe work environment, therefore we're requiring people, well, then you should be requiring everyone to test because whether you're vaccinated or not, you could still catch COVID and you could still. And that's the big thing. At that point, we knew that it was everybody was getting it. It didn't matter what your status was. So now you are one. 100% being discriminatory.

I'm going to, I'm going to bounce something off you because this is what our attorneys recommended for us and our video splits you with the audience so good. So this is our attorneys. The in the, the federal scenario suggested that we make an argument referred to as perceived disability discrimination because you can't discriminate against someone for any disability.

And there's Supreme Court precedent saying that having an infectious disease, and in this case I'm pretty sure it was HIV, is a protected status and that's a protective disability. And So what they were arguing and what we, what I argued in my EEO was that essentially the FBI was treating me as though I either had or I was in an imminent danger of contracting an infectious disease, which makes me a protected status.

Since they were treating me as though I had it, that made it, that made it a disability that we can argue on behalf of. Now, of course, the FBI investigates their own EEO complaints. So they found themselves to be not guilty of the EO violations despite the 11 retaliations that I had. Documents which are pretty funny. And I I detailed that on a podcast a little earlier. So, but yeah, it's funny because

you go through you. It's like, well, that's not what the, you know, this not, that's not what the law means. It's like, well, that's what the law says. Like, I'm, you know, you, you and I don't play attorneys, not even on TV. And yet we can read the plain letter of the statute and we can make reasonable determinations because we did it. And that's part of the job.

So it's funny when they come at you with this like BS case law, it's like, well, maybe so, but like the broad interpretation of the, the actual words, you know, just because it hasn't been, it hasn't been applied to the situation before, it doesn't mean it doesn't apply to the situation. Yeah. And unfortunately, the way to to fight back these types of policies. Is you need mass non compliance when you're working, you know, for a government entity and I get it.

You know, I I I agree with you earlier point it's but it's easy for me to get on my high horses. So I'm going to fight back against this. I have my pension.

I did not that I, you know, wanted to lose my job, but if that's what was going to happen, although I suspect, you know, that that building's full of attorneys, they probably realize, hey, if we fire this guy, he's probably going to have a pretty good on pro termination lawsuit because there was nothing in my performance that would have justified

termination. Although that's we've had plenty of other people that have lost, like including active duty military, right, that have been bounced out and for for taking a stand for refusing to do. And we now know, I mean, these these vaccines are not safe and effective. People were lied to. And you see this, DeMar Hamlin, for example, I mean, I don't buy this notion that he had a cardiac arrest because, you know, a particularly hard

tackle. I mean, it looked pretty routine to me. And yeah, I mean, even, yeah, even if you stay out of the speculative realm on things like that. And I think those things are like, I'm going to leave that to his doctors and I'm. You know, I'm medically qualified enough to know that I don't. I'm not medically qualified.

That's one of those things. But we can talk very specifically about things like what they did in the state of Florida where the the surgeon general came out and made a warning instead, you know, for men, particularly men and men of the athletic ages under the, you know, whatever it was 17 to, you know, 45, whatever it is that there's a much higher risk of myocarditis. And myocarditis is a big deal.

And then it basically has a 50% chance of ending your life in the next what, seven years or something to that effect. I'm quoted off the top of my head, so Fact Check me if as necessary in the comments, folks. But you know, there's been plenty of medical studies that says at the very least, we should have some caution.

And and people who you know, and then this is also America, like you and I both swore to the same thing, which is to say, you know, I'm down with people doing whatever it is they want to do with their own money that doesn't infringe on anybody else. And then you want to get your tongue cut and turn it into a a fork snake. And you want to look like that, like, you know, and you're in a metal band, like do whatever the hell you want. You want to get your ears turned into elf ears.

I always say, like, as long as it's with your money, I don't care. I think it's weird, but I'm not into it. And if you want to go get a shot? That you think is going to be protecting, then so be it. And there are things that I get and there's things that don't. And I don't think anybody would have lost their minds over the flu shots, you know, three years ago, because we, I didn't experience that.

Like if you said like I didn't get the flu shot, like people weren't going to not be your friend. They weren't going to not let you in at home, right? I mean, it didn't happen. That's a good point, right. And so like, so people's medical choices was, was something that was first of all, it was none of anybody else's. Damn. Business it was that. Nunya Principle, which I'm a big fan of. And then the second thing was, is that like it didn't cause discrimination. You know what?

I used to work in a hospital. I don't know if I told you, but it's all like, I've been a paramedic while I used to work in a hospital. And every flu season you had a choice. You can either get the flu shot and you didn't have to wear a paper mask around the patients or you would not get the shot. And then you were supposed to wear a mask and they did it by like a sticker on your badge. And that's fine. I mean, it's probably

discriminatory too. Like at this point I have probably draw a line on, but at the time that seemed reasonable enough. And nobody judged you if you wore a mask, you're just the guy wearing a mask because you didn't want to get that shot. And they don't care. Nobody cares, right? You know what I mean? Like it wasn't, there wasn't a moral judgement on you that you're you've now like you're now part of them and. You're a bad person. Which is what you and I are in

the. Category at this point like you're the them, you're the other, you're the guy that's out there very tribal people getting that vax and then. Posting a picture. On social media with their vax. Car, you know, by the way, so I recently filed a a separate open records request right before Thanksgiving requesting the vaccination status of our attorney general. Attorney General, you know, and I got the response, it took about two weeks and, and I, I'm not making this up.

The response was, well, you're not entitled to that information. Now, there are exemptions in the open records law and there's good exemptions. So I can't like go to the Madison Police Department and ask for all the home addresses of all the police officers.

The open records are protected, but this, there's nothing in there that says anything about like in this case about they talk about financial information, medical information isn't in there surprisingly, but I think that's because they rely on HIPAA for that. So the attorney respondents is we have decided not to provide you with this information based

on the balancing test. I think there's some precedent there, but it was involved in financial information and HIPAA when we were specifically told it only applies to healthcare providers and insurance companies and related businesses. The last time I checked that. Was none of those? Yes, correct. So I have been working with a conservative talk show host here who has a couple of websites. He posted a story in October and about my original kind of battle with with the state.

I'd also did file a federal After my state discrimination complaint was dismissed, I tried to file one with the EEOC, and that was AI did a phone interview with somebody that lasted about two minutes. Yeah, they, they're also part of the. They're they're friendly. Yeah, they're comedians too. They they think you're abusing the process, which is even. Weirder, right? But they're government employees. What do you expect? Right. Yeah. So at least I can say I checked that box. I tried to.

I filed both at the state and. Federal level. Yep. And this is this is one of the reasons why I think you and I get along too. It's because it's like you got to fight all the fights all the time and. Every venue that you can and, and you know, in the federal government, they call it administrative remedies. That's what I'm doing. And you're doing the same thing. You're, you're, you're checking all the boxes. You're giving them the opportunity to address your grievances.

But we know they're not going to do it. And then are you still, are you still being paid? Are you still in that job or? No, Yeah. Oh, yeah. In fact, I got a letter of reprimand. And because all the all the restrictions. Were were ended? Well, technically they claimed they were ended in March of 2021. So the mask mandate was ended and then the requirement to continue to test was ended in March. However, 22 if you're pardon me and 22 yes, in March of like early March of 2022, but.

I know if. You're applying for a job with the state of Wisconsin. It's still a requirement for applicants. I don't know how that flies. So you have to report your vaccination status if you're applying for a job. If, if you like me and say no, I'm not going to do that, what are the odds you're going to get that job, Right, Right. But honestly, there is something to be said about that being like a grandfather policy. Like when I got hired on. By the Bureau, it wasn't a.

Condition of employment. I met all the conditions of employment and they didn't actually change the conditions of employment, which would take some real work. And so if they had done that, that would be a different animal. But like I said, I think it's still discriminatory. So I almost think that's the that's as close to the right way to do something that I disagree with as you can do is that you say, look like you're coming into this job, like these are the, these are the criteria.

If they changed it on you after you got hired, I think that's where the issue is for people like you. And I like I, I honestly think if you go into an open minded and you go like, well, that's a job that's closed to me. Nobody's like, I don't think anybody's entitled to any particular job. Like I don't think people are entitled to work in the military either.

But if you brought them on and then you're going to make this executive order, like, what the Hell's the president had to do with, you know, public health, number one? And what does this have to do with public health too? Because this is an age bracket. That's not, you know, you talk about people in the military and, and overwhelmingly they are very fit and they are well monitored when it comes to

health. And they have a lot of, you know, it's not like we are like requiring military spouses. That's the other thing that was so dumb to me. The minute you know that anybody can get the damn virus and if you can't mandate that their spouses and their their family members and anybody that they like roommates, you know, we're talking about like privates and stuff living with other dudes and I guess gals doing the same thing. It's like you can't control the the human environment.

And so this was just like a political cudgel that was being wielded to try to get the. Most number of people in this country. Forced to do something. And that's why they lean on private business too. And it's all tyranny. And so anyway, all that stuff like obviously that rubs you wrong, which I love and and that's why we get along. It's it's like any tyranny. It wouldn't, it wasn't even just this.

And I'm sure if there were any other mandatory things that didn't even affect you, they would still upset you because that's just the nature of of your character, right. Yeah, it's my neighbor here was fired public school teacher city Madison, actually. Filed a religious exemption which was 9 which it seems to be unconstitutional to me, especially when they approved some and others they did not because it depended on what your religion was.

She's a Catholic, she filed a law and got her job back, got all of her back pay and a settlement. So what does that tell you? I mean, they obviously, and I think she had to sign a non disclosure, but they obviously knew they screwed the pooch and, you know, but she was in a very tiny minority because, you know, the public school teachers, particularly for the city of Madison, for the most part, very left-leaning. They probably had 95% compliance. She was an outlier.

Yeah. Which for me it's like, OK, fine. Everybody agreed to do something that that's where the group think is. So be it. I just the the the brilliance of. America has always been that we rule by majority, but we protect the minority. I mean, that is the nature of our our system. In fact, we have several rules like the, you know, the Electoral College to be able to kind of keep these.

Things at Bay? So that you don't have the straight tyranny of the majority because you know, every single dictatorship started with with majority rule. Like that's how they, I mean, that's, that's what they are. That's that's why our, our country is so special, is that we have some breaks, some internal checks and balances that be able to stop those things. So anyway, it's just, it's interesting that that's the it's interesting that we ended up in a fight like this domestically.

I mean, if you asked you and you started the FBI, like I think you would have been in my camp, you would have been in my signal group. He would have been one of my guys that we'd be fine. Because I do have people that have 28 years of experience that that were probably, you know, classmates similar years. And it's just they, they knew what was right and wrong long before. And some for some people it's non negotiable. It's. Interesting how many people it

is negotiable. For I think that's what was so interesting about the last couple of years, right? Yeah, it's kind of disappointing. I would have. I wouldn't if you told me about this, that this. Pandemic was going to come up and there's going to be vaccine mandates, everything. And just sort of the way the facts like, you know, played out, I would have suspected there would have been a much

higher rate of non compliance. But there's that the theory of mass formation psychosis that I'd have heard of before. It kind of makes sense now. We're all psychologists. And not not only are we all psychologists, we're also virologists, right? Like everybody became an expert at 5 things. Over the last three years that nobody had. Been. Right. And law now. Now you and I have to be experts and EEO, right? Yes. Yeah, that was the other thing I

mean. I was spending a lot of time doing legal research when I should. Have been working for the taxpayers of Wisconsin, right. This is what the box they put me in. And I did have a a a former FBI analyst who's who's like us very conservative guy. He's a retired he was also a naval officer and recovering attorney and he kind of helped me through the process a little bit too, even though he's not a

member of the Wisconsin bar. But it's nice to be able to lean on friends like that too, to help you in the situation. But a lot and a lot of it I just did on my own. It's not rocket science. You just got to hit your nose in the books and start looking this stuff up. And like, who knew there was a provision that says it's unlawful to discriminate against for use of unusual lawful product. I don't know where that came from. No like that at the federal level. No, certainly not.

But that's really interesting stuff. Do you think that any of the fight that you've had has has moved the needle for anybody that's. Like a. Very junior type employee for the for the state government. It's interesting. I just did another open records on Tuesday and I haven't obviously gotten a response. Yet. But I'm asking for how many employees were disciplined for not complying with this policy, just within the Department of Justice, not the entire executive branch.

So it'll be interesting to see because I don't know, I, I, unlike you with your signal group, we're pretty much disconnected. Most of the people at DOJ are now working from home when I go into the office so. Like a ghost town. So I don't really know how many other people might have pushed back against us. I'm kind of curious. I don't know if they'll deny that one or not. I, I said, hey, I'm not asking for names. I'm just looking for sheer

numbers. And how many people and what type of discipline did they get right? You know, like, maybe it's just going to be me. I don't know. I mean, there's like. 800 employees there, I feel. I feel like it won't just be you, but I think it'll be less than what we would hope it would be. But it won't be none, you know what I mean? That's the other thing and that. And that's the other thing that I think people felt in addition to the isolation being said at home.

And and then I think that's where the censorship and we can talk briefly maybe about the Twitter Files and maybe that's probably enough for we're at 2 1/2 hours. So that's pretty good. Yeah. So the people felt so siloed and and isolated because they didn't like nobody knew this was coming and nobody knew that they had to go and find people that were politically and maybe morally on

the same page. Because I, I think we all thought America was America and that we would all defend each other like I would defend people to have opinions that I despise. You know, I, I think abortion is, is atrocious, but I would, I would argue that you, you have that right. And I would try to convince you otherwise with logic. And if you don't want to hear it, then I have no right to force it on you. I can't voice my values upon you. It's going to be down to the

core system. And then it's going to be between you and God, which is pretty straightforward. And that's the way Eric has always been, right? I mean, that's, that's the value of this country. That's so brilliant. And who knew that before going to force what is really a secular religion on us? And I think in a lot of ways, that's what we've experienced. That's why I like calling them Cavidians because I think it's funny One, it's kind of a play on the Branch Davidians.

But more moreover, it is like it needs a name because it is a thing that is it involves the mask and it don't clear me without it. And you can't come into my house if you didn't have the shot that didn't do anything and all the other kind of wild stuff that went along with it. You know, it's, it's a it's a lack of social tolerance that that I think, you know, it's probably innate to Someone Like You and me and, and a lot of people that I just want to be

left alone. Well, I think this is right on a Saul Alinsky, right? I mean the the whole polarization I mean. Obama had an opportunity to be a very. Unifying president and he did just the opposite, you know, and, and it was done by design. And a lot of this polarization is illustrated by where people stand when it comes to the COVID jab. It's a, it's a good example of that.

And it's unfortunate because this country wasn't always like it. You know, there wasn't the type of vitriol that we see now between Democrats and Republicans. Of course, it's it's amplified because of social media. But I, you know, I think a lot of that has been done by design, sort of the divide and conquer, you know, in, I think probably both parties are guilty of it, but the Democrat party is really the sort of the masters of the

of the polarization. And, and that was something that was preached by Saul Alinsky, who was one of Obama's heroes. So I know we're getting off. No, but I think, I think that's, I think unfortunately politics and culture are intertwined at this point to a point where you know, not, not. The way that I grew up, but it is the way that it is today and there's no other way around it. Do you use social media at all

or are you just aware of it? No, I mean I the only thing I have is a is a LinkedIn account I don't have. You know, Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. I, I think that's the most common thing for yeah, I know I, I, I mean, I didn't either until very, very recently.

And I think folks who who. Know that about me, know that I started, you know, literally my account started the day that I went and spoke to the media, which is a weird thing to do for guys like you and I were always, kind of probably always in the quiet and like, I don't want to be on that at all.

I'm on it more often. I call it my Chia pet because because you do have to, you have to water it and you have to maintain what's going on. And and if you're going to be in the fight, you might as well be in the fight. But do you have an active LinkedIn account? If people are are part of Wisconsin DOJ, can they can they reach out to you there and kind of link arms with you? Is that a, is that a good place for that?

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm hoping, you know, to maybe connect with some of these. Depending on how many other people maybe were disciplined and it might take a little investigating, I guess to find out who those people might be. But if they if they were to see this yes, all by all means and and yeah, they can always reach me through my Wisconsin DOJ. I mean that's public that's on

the DOJ website. Do you do you want me to to do A to tweet out a link to your LinkedIn at all of what when we put this thing out there or put it in the show notes where people. Can click through to it and if they are in part of that is that yeah that's fine it's up to you like like I don't want to thrust on anyone but I know that you want you got a strong back and I know that you're in this fight and if people. Want to go and look your?

Name up they can find videos and I watched videos of you speak in front of your City Council or your what is that your the Dane County board. Yeah, the Dane County board, which is yeah. And you know, back-to-back you got up and gave a well, well thought out you. Know takedown on. Their abortion policy. And then we got some leftist chick who's reading out her phone who looks like she lives at home with three cats. And I mean, you're involved in the social, the social struggle

that so many people are. And you're not, you know, shrinking Violet when it comes to getting out there and being public about it and putting your name and your face and your voice to it. So I am appreciative of that. As someone who's now recently, like reluctantly in that same venue, you know, you can't turn away from a fight. And I can see that that's that's not your MO. So I just, I don't want to send any of your stuff out without doing that. But we will, we'll add it to it.

I appreciate that. I will. I'm going to be making a donation to the Wisconsin veterans. Museum next month. I did a fair amount of like stolen Valor Bureau. Once again, my supervisor was very supportive of my lot of supervisors would probably say why you wasted your time with us, but he understood, you know, and you know, it's a misdemeanor crime, but it's as as another veteran, I'm sure you can appreciate that a lot of times these individuals are involved

in other frauds and other scams. That's right. Yeah. If you're willing to do something shady like steal, you know, like lie about your your military records, often times you're willing to do other things. Too. That's an excellent point. I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah. So we we managed during the course of my career. So they seized a few things. Including a An individual showed up at the Medal of Honor

convention. Talk about the brazen When Freebay hosted the Medal of Honor convention in 2007 and he was wearing a camouflage desert camouflage. Not the digital 1, not the chocolate chip, but the kind of the in between 1:00 and he had combat like a jump, wings with a star and then a CIB and a Ranger cap and Al Rascon, who was one of the Medal of Honor recipients. And this went on for a week. It was.

It was really a cool experience. Probably the highlight of my career because I got to meet all these Medal of Honors. Yeah, that sounds awesome. 21 different events, including Tom Norris. I mean, just awesome. But this El Roscoe went over. And he started. Chatting this guy up and he says, hey, I've just, I noticed you have combat jump when he was younger. He was a Desert Storm vet for parents. Supposedly. He said, where did you do your

combat jump? And the guy said, oh, into Kuwait. And he said Kuwait. I don't think the United States did any combat jump. And so they ended up seizing this jacket from the guy and he was escorted off the premises by the Brown County Sheriff's deputies. And that jacket ended up in the hospitality room and Mr. Rascon signed it and they put phony on

there. And then there was a Tom Katona, who's a retired FBI agent who did a lot of, he's kind of the pioneer doing stolen Ballard stuff in the 90s. He signed it because he was at the convention and that I ended up getting this at the end of the convention and it's just been sitting in my basement. So I contacted the Wisconsin Veterans Museum and they said, yeah, we might be interested in that. And I've got some others like ribbon racks and documents and stuff that they seized over the

over the years. Yeah, we actually went to trial on a guy misdemeanor probably one of the how many FBI just go to trial on a misused bench trial out of stolen Ballard. the US Attorney's office agreed to prosecute the guy went to trial. That's wild. So that was kind of kind of fun. Yeah, he didn't get, he got convicted. He just got like community service and fine but. But the publicities? It's a big part of it, too. Yeah. It's it's a it's a deterrent.

It's a deterrent, right? And that's the other piece of it. You know who, Don? Do you know Don Shipley? You're familiar. With him oh of course, yeah and and obviously his son is a is a world class stud who's who's seen his pet yeah DJ is just awesome DJ I know DJI didn't know DJ no, but I'll tell you what I. It's so strange, like his stories a. Lot of his stories are so touching to people. Who?

You know, I've got a lot of buddies in the special operations community and, and one of the, you know, I was, I was working out listening to his podcast with Shawn Ryan at one point. And I don't know if you've heard it, but you know, folks, if you haven't heard, yeah, it's one of the more moving things I've ever heard. And I, I literally was like, I was lifting weights and I just broke down and I had tears running dead in my face because

it's like, I know those stories. Like I have friends who who have, you know, who have, he was talking about, you know, wanting to kill himself. And when I was actually at at Quantico, my recruiter, who I didn't have a very close relationship with, but he was an important person in my life. His brother had died in a in a one of those Chinook crashes that he was with a bunch of SEAL Team six guys. So as the, you know, the this was right after the bin Laden

raid. It was like a couple months later and somebody lasted, correct. And that was exactly, but anyway, this, you know, Sean Harvell, which is the name of my, the guy that recruited me, his brother's name was Andy. And he was apparently like a world class stud and a great guy. And Sean was just like one of the most intense human beings that I've ever seen in my life. And I heard all these stories about him when I was active duty as well, because see what I

mean? It's a small community that I worked in. And you know, he, it looks like he, you know, climbed into a bottle and, and walked into the waves. And, you know, he was a world class stud in the water and, and he didn't come out and, and so

they found him floating. And I, anyway, I found that out when I was at Quantico. And it's like, anyway, hearing what happened with DJ and it's like, like the people that are committed to these types of this kind of the people that are that tear and, and honestly, anybody who, who's stealing valor from guys like this, it is a real crime. Like, I don't, I, I find it disgusting.

It's like when, you know, when you got friends who have gone through there that are wearing a, you know, a bracelet from a friend of theirs that died. And it didn't have to be from something anybody knows about or anybody ever heard about. And then someone's going to put on a uniform that they didn't deserve that they have no right to.

And they didn't do a freaking combat jump into anything like they never earned a mustard say they may not even earn their wings, which is no, you know, it's not even a big deal to fall out of the back of AC 1:30 because I've done it. And it's like, you know, like I wouldn't go bragging to anybody.

I did it. It's fun, it's stupid, there's funny stories out of it, but it's not like, you know, a combat shop is a real 30% of the people in the combat shop end up with broken bones and, you know, don't walk right afterwards. So there there is, there is. You have to. Sometimes you see these guys get a little overzealous.

Because there are some people with some legitimate like mental health issues and, and you got to, there's a fine line between somebody like that who's wearing something maybe they, they shouldn't be wearing. I mean, you know, it's it's but. Well, if you're going to go, yeah. But if you're going to go to the Medal of Honor convention and try to be that guy. That's a different. That's a totally different. Animal than the guy who was

outside. The you know, it's like I, I remember somebody was trying to, he was trying to beg money off me when I was washing my car or something like that. And he started telling me about, you know, a battalion that didn't exist. And he was giving me this, you know, this. It's like, I don't know what you're saying, but those things don't make any sense. Like you're mixing services and MO s s that don't have anything to do with you. Like you're talking to the wrong

guy. Like I'm not giving any money. Like I'm sorry that you're troubled. Whatever your problems is, that guy doesn't need to go to jail. That guy doesn't even need to be shamed in court. But if you're going to show up at the Medal of Honor convention and wear a Medal of Honor, that's not yours. Like we can't have that in this country. And you know, that's that's a misdemeanor. I'm not mad at he I did interview the guy. I was asked to interview him after it was over and he was

very remorseful. He had been in the army and he'd been injured. And I said, here's what I'd like you to do. Yeah. In fact, I think maybe Tom Catone or somebody has suggested this, that he write a letter of apology and send it to. At the time. Robert Howard was the president of the Medal of Honor, and if you've never heard his story, he's a true bad ass. I mean, just Special forces, Vietnam, that I think he's got 2 like 2 distinguished service crosses in addition to the Medal of Honor.

Just an unbelievable bad ass. So, but the guy did follow up. He wrote a letter of apology because we got confirmation from the mail. It's you know, it doesn't have to be resolved in with criminal charges. But no, you're right, exposure, they apologize or something like that. It's usually sufficient. So it's honestly the way I used to like to handle my guardians too. It's like I don't need to develop a big case. I just call you and tell you you crossed the line or you're right near.

It and please don't make me do this again. And most times that I mean that that is the community service that we can do a lot of times for some of the smaller foolish things as, as you know, like I said, when people, when the FBI calls, people tend to answer. I don't know why they do. And when you knock on the door, they tend to talk to you. And if you can make a difference and say, like, maybe we couldn't, maybe we just not have this talk again, that'd be

really great. Maybe don't say anything stupid and threatening on Twitter. You know, there's an impact there rather than this, this sadness that we're saying where they're running down all these people from January 6th and people who walked around inside the velvet ropes and they're trying to send this horrible message. Yeah, it could have been a not going to talk and it probably would have been the end of it for a lot of people.

And I think to be fair, I think they got the damn message with the way the news media has crucified them. But anyway, it's just it's sad that we've got to that point. I'm going to, I'm going to call today. We're at 2:45 here. So that was a pretty nice long chat. I do appreciate you, Jerry, giving me so much time and sharing your story with us. I know I will post that if you get some follow-ups from

Wisconsin DOJ, that'd be great. And producer Phil is not with me. I'm doing the solo, but he told me that I need to read a five star review. So we do. If you do like our conversation, please share it. Please like it, please subscribe. And if you leave us a five star review, we'll read one of them on the show. So here's what we got from our five star review of the day. It said a fed on your side. Kyle and the suspendables have a

great sense of humor. The show gives you a perspective of the federal leviathan which has morphed into the Deep State. I would have never guessed that I would have so wholeheartedly agreed with an FBI agent. Kudos for listing your preferred pronouns. 5 star review from AP711-C GFTI Don't know what the heck that name is. That is not a name, sadly enough, Jerry. I think most people probably would have previously agreed with most of what people in our

in our job were like. I think that is that that would have been the the default position. And unfortunately it is no longer. No, that's unfortunate. Hopefully it can change. Yeah, but it's going to be a heavy lift. It is or or it has to be or it has to be torn all the way down and maybe something new fills that spot that, yeah, I do appreciate. You joining me folks, This has been the Kyle Seraphin show and please join us again. If you like what you're here, share with your friends.

Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to the Kyle Seraphin show. Be sure to follow him on Twitter and Truth at Kyle Seraphin.