Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that started just five dollars a month, and when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes add free. That's the big bonus for that.
I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers, but this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to, and we really appreciate that, So go and check us out at patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of eyes On and we're really I'm going to jump right
into our guests and then I'll intro the other two. Not that the other two are less important, but we're very excited to have Bill Gage back on today, an old friend of the Team House, also with a senior Secret
Service officer. Actually that's not the right word, isn't, but nevertheless senior within the Secret Service under two presidents Bush forty three and Obama, but also is just a guy who has really can lay out the you know, some of the complexities of providing security, which is a lot more than many, you know, many the public realized what goes into all of this. So anyway, I'm welcome again. I'm Andy Milburn, decent minds, I'm Dave
Parker says, but it says I'm Dmitia Catacos. Bill. Thanks again for Bill. He jumped on with us on Saturday, like like last minute, right after it happened to and he gave us like fifteen minutes or so, you know, while things were like super fluid and still happened. So I appreciate that, Bill, Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, and like my running joke, you know who says the Teamhouse doesn't have breaking news, So yeah, yeah, I did from the parking lot of a grocery store.
It's awesome with my son in the seat next to me in my truck. So definitely a very raw, kind of rough street interview there. So thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of the Teamhouse, and you know, I do listen to the Teamhouse and to Jason You're and Andy's new podcast as well, so I'm a big fan. Thanks both. Great. Bill, Well, you know, before you have to rush off to all the other things and other audiences who clamoring for your time. What happened and why?
Yeah. So you know, my running joke with my son, who's fifteen, is he could probably sit here and give this interview because he's heard me say the same things over and over again to the New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post. I did an MPR interview this morning. I did the BBC andy from your home country, did the BBC here a little bit ago. So you know, clearly an attack, right, an assassination attempt on a major American political figure, the Republican nominee for president, who
happens to also be a former president. So you know, if we want to back up, I, like most Americans, I was going on about my life and a buddy mine hit texted me and said, hey, you better turn the news. I turned on the news and I was watching just moments after it happened, and was talking to my wife and I said, hey, I don't know how somebody could have gotten a gun into the event. It must have been like a three D printed gun, maybe like a
homemade gun. Somehow subverted the magnetometer checkpoints, somehow got the weapon in I was watching more and more video and then I'm thinking, did somebody throw a rock or a cell phone? Because the audio hadn't been released yet, right,
so it was just the video of the incident. And then, of course, as more in video and then the gunshots are being released or getting the audio of the gunshots, I'm thinking to myself, well, all right, so now somebody Now I'm thinking somebody in an elevated position with a you know, I don't want to use the term sniper rifle, but somebody in an elevated position with a rifle firing shots. So then you know, I'm watching the video and we really did did do a bio on here, Andy
and Jason. I've been on here a number of times, but you know I was on the Counter Assault Team for six years. The Counter Assault Team is a pretty elite unit within the Secret Service, really formed after the Reagan assassination to counter the Secret Service operates on this protective principle that you learned day one of Special Agent training, which is a maximum to the protect ee,
minimum to the problem. All right. So what that means is, you know, if you're around the protector, you're on the shift as a Secret Service calls it. I think in England, Andy they call it close protection. So if you're immediately around the protectee, don't necessarily draw your gun and return fire to give cover to that protect You want to cover them with your body and evacuate them away. So Kat's mission is the opposite which they want
to Actually, Cat's mission is divert suppress, neutralized. That's actually in their sort of mission profile. So they want the bad guy to actually, hey, someone shooting at me. It's not the people around the president. KAT wants to draw their attention and then suppress that attack. So the guys on black that you see on the stage, those are members of the Counter Assault
Team that I was a member of for six years. So so yeah, clearly someone was able to get access to an elevated position and get some shots off. If you listen to the timing the shots ring out, you know, you see Trump grab his ear and within milliseconds a second or two, the counter snipers are now engaging him and actually eliminate eliminate him, right, eliminate the threat. They kill him. The Counter Sniper Unit, the CS unit, is a very story unit in the Secret Service. They were stood
up after the Kennedy assassination. The Secret Service is divided into two sections. You have the Uniform division and then you have the agent side. It's just the way it's evolved over time. Don't ask me why it became that way, but it's just the way it is. Kind of like the Marine Corps part of the Department of the Navy or whatever. It's just the way it
is. CS some of the best shooters in the world. Their qualification course, one of the final qualification go or no go exercises for them is I can't remember, but it's, you know, shooting a bull's eye at five hundred yards in like three seconds or something, you know, from a standing dropping to a kneeling. I forget their requirements, but they have very stringent requirements. So if you listen to the sounds of those gunshots, you hear
CS engaging him almost immediately. And from there's been some media reports. I had a source hit me up that said the round shot him right in the mouth. And so you guys know this. The brain is the CPU, right, and you want a headshot and that sort of attack right to immediately drop the threat. Law enforcement generally trains right the high target era in here. But those sniper shots want to do that triangle right the imaginary line here
from your forehead down to your mouth. I know that's pretty gruesome, but that's just the truth of the matter. So you know, they eliminated the shooter pretty quickly that the shift. Those around the President Trump that are signed
to the Trump Protective Detail, they responded exactly as trained. If you watch the video, within a second or two of the first shot, they're jumping on stage, they're covering a I think we might have maybe talked about this a little d on Saturday, but it's draped in sort of a flag decorative
material around the stage. The Secret Service calls that a DAIS, but that's bliss stick steel around and it's specifically designed for the protected and duck behind and the podium or the DAIS as a Service called is actually ballistic as well. And you can actually see one of the agents tries to move it out of the way and it doesn't really He tries to kind of like kick it and it doesn't really move. You can see that in the video because it's really
heavy. But Bill, I got a question pretty quickly, and sorry to ramble on my wife tells me I take you move to answer questions? No, absolutely, no, we trust me. We like that kind of rambling. All right, and I'll tell my wife that she was wrong. Most wives are most of the time. Wait wait, what was that? Yeah? So the the the Countess snipe at piece, I would imagine, is I mean incredibly challenging. I'd be interesting, you know what you can tell
us about in this picticular incidence. Arguably the problem was relatively easy, right it was an a K So is a I mean, I don't mean relatively easy. I don't, but I meant it could have been much more difficult if the guy was you know, was trained, had a sniper weapon, and that increases the potential radius of places that that he can you know,
he can locate. How do you how does the secret Service when you guys are so in a sense dependent on local law enforcement, you know, with those outer court ons, how do you how do how do you crack that problem? I mean location of a of a of a snipe or a serious shooter further out to rank, further range. Yeah, a lot to unpack their andy. So the first thing is the advance work. Okay, So see us the counter snipers there are part of the Secret Service Advanced Team.
Every the Secret Services, the most elite protective agency in the entire world. Every single agency around the world that provides protection to the world's elected leaders models themselves on the Secret Service protective mind model and Secret Service protective methodology. So the Secret Service has developed this advance. You know, it's been around since
the Secret Service. You know, in the forties and fifties, they started sending agents out well ahead, well ahead of the protectee or the president and vice president. So a lot of what you're talking about, how do we mitigate these long range threats are handled. During the advance you have the CS guys going out and looking at getting up and very high vantage points. You know, I was a part of many many Advanced Teams and CS was sort
of a sister unit to CAT. We worked hand in hand with them and their their call sign is Hercules is the call sign for the CS units. And a lot of times they would get up on a very high elevated position. They would have to get on the jerry lift. Sometimes it would climb
up. They would get a fire truck. We'd ask the local fire department to lift them up and they would get way high up so they could actually see down off into the distance and see exactly what you're talking about hiding points, because obviously they're thinking and I'm not a sniper, obviously I was on CAP, but I can kind of understand some of the lingo here. But it's almost when the CS guys are doing the advance are kind of thinking like, okay, sniper versus sniper. Right, if I were a sniper,
where would I go hide? And so if they see places, then they try to block that line of sight with a school bus, maybe garbage truck. Sometimes you'll see those at events. So that's how the Secret Service, in particular the CS guys try to mitigate that threat is during the advance work and just spend hours up at that elevated position with binoculars looking around, thinking, Hey, if I were a sniper, where would I attack from.
So that's really how they mitigate that threat. And you know, when the shuck is taken, how did they, for instance, like yesterday, how did they locate him so quickly? Well, I think because known shooting positions. It's likely shooting positions. And it's a great question, Andy, and it's a question I was actually speaking with a reporter just before I came on with you guys. And I think for me, that is a very important
question that I would be asking. And let me be long winded here and I'll circle back, all right, every single Secret Service event I've ever been on, and I was part of hundreds, if not thousands of these types of events during my career, there was always an issue during the event, right, someone would report a suspicious person. Hey, I think this guy has a gun. There's an unattended package over here that looks like a bomb.
Every single event I was at there was always something coming over the radio from the command post. So, and I can tell you a couple of times. Did I tell the Martha's Vineyard story the paintballers? Not the other day? Oh okay, I thought it so, So to give you an example of the kind of things that happened during these events. So in two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine, Obama was a very young president. He goes to Martha's Vineyard for the summer. I was on the cat
team. We had four cat teams for that trip, you know, for four separate shifts. So the day Obama arrives, I'm assigned the CAT team. I was on Charlie squad. We were assigned to cover his arrival at the airport on Martha's Vineyard. So we're taking our positions waiting Air Force One's
on approach. They're probably about minute and a half to wheels down, and one of the CS guys comes over the radio and says, hey, I've got a group of armed men wearing camouflage with painted faces with rifles running into the woodline towards there where Air Force one is gonna be wheels down. All right, so holy shit, man, what are we going to do?
So the standard procedure that the service has developed over time is they have a unit called CS Response, which is going to be an agent with a uniformed police officer or multiple police officers will then respond to what they saw. They're not going to immediately just start firing. We're not going to cause an incident by you know, telling the plane, hey, you can't land, do a touch and go. You know, the media is there lined up with
cameras. So major incident here, right, and potentially embarrassing to the president. And so in this case, the decision was made and this is all happening within seconds, the decisions made Lead Air Force one land, will hold Obama on the plane? Do we sort this out? The plane lands, the Massachusetts State Troopers go over there, and it turned out it was a group of weekend paintballers that had no idea that Obama was landing there, right.
All the guns were paintball guns, just a bunch of soccer dads right trying to do their LARPing for the weekend. And so I started being along with didn't answered the question, ay, but you know, those kind of things happened during these events, and so you know, I'm asking the same question. I think it broke late yesterday that a police officer actually climbed up
a ladder to confront the gunman. And so I don't know if the CS guys were the ones that hey said, hey, local police, you need to go investigate there's a guy on a roof, or if there's video. Now, unfortunately I hate to say where I got the source, but there's video on TMZ where they were actually someone captured the guy crawling up onto the building. So I don't know if someone grabbed a tension of local police and said, hey, what's this guy up to? Or if the CS guys
said, hey, can somebody go check him out? What's he up to? And so either way the Secret Service system irked. It just was a few seconds too late. Yeah, yeah, I mean it it, thank god, is something that was an impressively fast response, was you know, was was my point? Really that too, And having been on the receiving end of snipers before, I know how difficult it is, especially in an urban environment, especially with crowds, to locate point of shot. So that
was, you know, that was remarkable. So my educated guests here, Andy, my professional educated guess is it came on the radio that we have a suspicious guy up here. So cus's attention was already drawn over there. They were probably looking at this guy. The CS guys have very sophisticated binoculars, and they looked, holy shit, that guy's got a gun. Oh
my god, he's firing. They were turned fire and killed him. I mean, I just broke that down, you know, into the five seconds there that you know, you can hear the audio, So it literally happened
some version of that is what my educated professional guess is. So presumably after this, the Secret Service does a and kind of an off direction review and for me to know if they called it that or not, what sort of things would they would you be looking at in this particular incident, if you you know, if you were to so you know, the FBI is in charge of the criminal investigation. Okay, we had an assault on a former
president, so that's a criminal that's against the federal criminal Code. So there's going to be the f back's handling the criminal investigation. Now what went wrong will be handled by the Secret Service. I'm sure there's going to be. I think Biden has called now for a congressional investigation. So the things that I would be looking at, you know, would be, hey, what footprint, what social media footprint did this guy have? Were there any indications
by anyone, was any of suspicious behavior reported? Was he posting on anything that was problematic or worrisome? Was this an unusual interest? You know, typically the Secret Service teaches sort of in threat management or threat assessing. You know, typically people just don't snap. They don't just wake up one day and say I'm gonna be an evil madman. That happens over time, right, and a lot of times, Jason, I think in the intel community
call it like leakage, or whatever. Right, these people are gonna leak out behaviors that are going to draw attention. So that's the first thing, is the secret you know, were there any indications of what this guy's motives were beforehand? So that would be the first thing. And then the second thing is during the advance work, did anybody recognize, Hey, those buildings need to be covered. So said so and like NBC just reported that,
like I saw that was security risk. Yeah, and it was supposedly covered by local law enforcement. But you know, I've had the same conversation with multimedia outlets. You know, there's a law enforcement recruiting crisis in the in the United States, and the Secret Service is not immune from that, okay, and they're way short staff for what they need to be and we're short staff when I was there, And you know, listen, it's not like
you see on the movies. Okay, Everybody walking into that event is not like facial recognition software that's run through a national database and the Secret Service pulls up their DNA, you know, on some database, and you know, there's not hundreds of CS teams out there that are coordinating drones flying overhead that have you know, missiles. It doesn't work like that. And so the Republican Convention starts today. You know, there's probably thirty CS teams at that
in Milwaukee covering that event. Biden was supposed to speak today at the LBJ Library. I believe in Austin, Texas that's been canceled. There was probably four CS teams at that. So what I'm explaining to you guys is that the Secret Service, you know, supplies exceeding demand here or demands exceeding supply, I should say. So there's limited resources, so the Secret Service has
to pick and choose. Hey, we only have this amount of we only have a finite number of CS teams, and this is all we can devote to this Trump event. So one of the things I would be looking at, Andy, is who made that decision that two CS teams was enough for
that event. But I mean, let me ask you something, Bill, I mean, I know, obviously in hindsight, I mean it's like make it's obvious, but why like, if that roof is a security issue, why not plant you know, a couple state troopers or local law enforcement guys in the parking lot and a couple on the roof, and like just make sure nobody fucks about. Yeah, and great question, and it sounds like, if the reporting is true that that was probably are requested. But here's
the thing. When you work with local police agencies, like I said, I was on dozens and dozens of advanced teams, those local police agencies are also going through a recruiting crisis, right, and they have limited resources. And perfect world, those law enforcement agencies would give you five hundred cops to go do whatever. But guess what, they still have to answer nine one one calls. They still have to respond, they still have to patrol their
assigned areas. So they have limited resources too. So there might have been one or two officers for that entire complex. So you know, when you work with an agency like the NYPD, I only have awesome things to say about the NYPD. I had great experiences up there. I think I joked with you guys on one of your shows, d about you get a lot of attitude from the NYPD when you need something that's like, hey, all
right, we'll get to you, hey whatever. But man, if you say, hey, I need a few cops, you know, you walk into a room and there's five hundred there, and you know, some precinct commanders like, hey, here, here's the guys you requested. Where do you want them? But not every agency has those type of resources. It's going to ask that too. If in situations like this, do they just say all hands on deck local law enforcement or are they No? No,
it's all hands on deck for these agencies. And the smaller the agency, the bigger the sort of requirement that is. So you know, I haven't looked at this local agency in Pennsylvania. Imagine you know, Pennsylvania is divided into these townships, so I imagine it's probably you could probably look that up right now to see what the population of that town is and what the you know, the local agency probably has to ask for county resources the Pennsylvania State
Police. So it's limited resources on the local side too. Guys. Yeah, it's a town of thirteen thousand. Yeah, so you know, if they have their own police department, I would imagine it's ten ten officers or less, you know, so they're probably going to be asking for the county police department and then Pennsylvania State Police support. But you know the other thing too is, you know, each aspect of Trump's movements require more and more
local resources. You have to have guys in the motorcade securing the motorcade route, you have to have you know, police escorts, you have to have local police officers at the airport for the arrival and departure. So it's really
a drain on resources. And so a lot of times, you know, when you have a natural disaster, that's why the president will usually say, Hey, I don't want to go to that natural disaster right away, because my visit will draw so many resources from the local agencies that need to sort of provide police protection to you know, the citizenry. It's like when the president travels, it's how many c seventeens does it take to Yeah, yeah, to support him. You know when I when I went to Mumbai,
India, there were like eleven seventeens that came to Mumbai. Wow. Yeah, it's it's not It's not as though he can you know, just go down range to visit the troops and not have any impact of it. Then on the marrilee Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think some of the war zone trips that the different presidents took where you know, Obama was smuggled
out of the White House one time, so was President Bush. And even then, you know, when he gets on Air Force one is trying to take a classified trip, Air Force one releases this like well known signature, right both visually, and then I think they have to acknowledge over the radio to the different towers around the world what they are, plus that they had. I'm trying to think of the term like combat air patrol is not the right term you guys might know, but like the there's gonna be fighter a
fighter escort right around Air Force one. So those also, you know, all these towers around the world are going to be like, hey, is that Air Force one? Right? Like why does this plane have you know, ten f eighteens you know flying with it? But anyway, yeah, it's a big footprint wherever the president travels. What I mean typically how big is the h Secret Service detail when he goes overseas? You know, relative question, andy, because you're gonna have agents assigned to the individual detail.
So if it's the President's Detail PPD, you're gonna have agents that are on a different shift depending on how long he's gonna be there, you might have three shifts you know, that might be close to fifty agents. But you're also going to have the post standards, which are sort of the junior agents that go to secure the site, the individual sites where the president's going to
go. So for an overseas visit like India, I mean there's probably close to five hundred seven hundred agents involved in that one visit, like a battalion of agents. Yeah. Yeah, And I think I told a story on one of the appearances d where you know, somebody put the wrong gas into
the President's limo. Yeah. And so the president travels with these like mechanics from General Motors, and these are like the world's most efficient, productive, knowledgeable GM mechanics that had to tear this engine apart overnight and put it back together in an airport hangar. So you know, I mean there's those kind of people that travel with the president as well. It's a massive, massive
entourage. Yeah. So bill On, you know I mentioned that when you when you went through training, I mean you focused on I mean, I imagine that the eighty one it was nineteen eighty one, right, the Reagan tempted assassination. I imagine that that becomes you know, the center point of more than one class, right, you know, I mean it's focusing on using examples from that. Who do you see that happening again here? I mean, is this going to become an iconic event that's taught? And yeah,
it doesn't really depend what comes out. A lot's going to depend on what comes out. But sort of I don't want to say my running joke, but I have this sort of discussion I have with people where I say, hey, when I joined the Service in two thousand and two, uh, training was designed around the agent training was designed around and I'm going to go way back here. Everyone was worried about Carlos the Jackal, who was an actual terrorist that was running around the world that no one could find.
And so it was like all of the Secret Service protective models were sort of set up for Carlos to jackle this loan terrorist gunman out there seventies what'd you say, seventies? So just D. It was before D was warned. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, so before you were born, D, there was this guy running around the world car that's fairly interesting. So kind of the lone wolf. Yeah, loan with no local connections, no social
media, right, all of that. Yeah, And I mean I'm going way back, like you know, some of the terrorist attacks that were studied were like the Red faction in the East Germany, Like didn't they kidnap the president of BMW or something, Hans Martin Schleyer, Yeah, yeah it was, uh yeah BMW Mercedes. Yeah. So so like these these were what
was studied. But as I was coming on in two thousand and two, this was quickly changing, right because we had the I was there six months after nine to eleven, so we had this sort of mentality change of hey, we only not have to worry about this loan gunman, but we also
have to worry about an al Qaeda armed organized attack by terrorist groups. So it slowly became you know, that threat sort of morphed into being prepared for both, right, a loan gunman alone assassin on a rope line somewhere as the president is shaking hands, but also this armed organized assault by a group of individual terrorists, so which you know was Alcada then became ISIS and uh, you know something that's not really talked about. It's been mentioned in a
few books, but I was there when this happened. But in Denver, there were a group of white supremacists in two thousand and eight, when Obama was getting the Democratic nomination in Denver sort of the coronation, if you will, where he officially takes the nomination. Just a day or two before that,
a group of white supremacists aligned with the Hells Angels. They tried to ram through a police checkpoint one night that were around I think it's in Vesco Field now, I think back then it might have been Course Field at Miles I forget what the name used to be, but they tried to ram through a police checkpoint to assault. The event led the police on a high speed
chase, and then those guys were subsetquently arrested. So I bring that story up to say that, you know, also homegrown terrorism now has to be also recognized as a threat because the Secret Service. Right, I mean,
we're this current political climate, right, wrong or indifferent. There are people out there that hate literally hate both candidates and will actually just because of the environment, they'll actually you know, take actions sort of that you call it the pathway to violence, right, They're going to ascend that pathway to violence just because of their political ideology. Right. Yeah, So what happens now, I mean like being gonna do a little bit of speculation, like within
the Secret Service. I mean, I know everyone's doing the blame game, like you kind of got some reports like the FBI is like saying the Secret Service fucked up, and the Secret Service is saying, like, you know, local law enforcement fucked up, which it kind of seems like it did. You know, Like what happens now in terms of like, for lack
of a better term, hedge rolling. Yeah, Well, the first thing is there's probably a lot of people yesterday night or this morning, a lot of agents were probably like God damn it, because you know, there's probably hundreds of agents all over the country. They got a phone caller email that says, hey, pack your shit, you're you're flying out somewhere because I saw the director this morning has said that they're going to bolster protection at the
RNC. Trump's going to get you know, a more enhanced protection profile. So the first thing that's going to happen, you know, is talk about all hands on deck. You know, there's probably nobody, no agents in any of these field offices around the country because a lot of people probably got some phone calls or text messages or emails that to get on a plane in a few hours. And you know one thing that's something talked about either DA is when it's when it's all said and done. And I meant to mention
this earlier. Andy. You know, the CS guys, they don't operate on a red light green light. They operate under standard police US police use of force standards. The standard for that is a very famous case called Granby Connor, which outlines the police responses to to perceive threats. So when it's all said and done, these agents are essentially caught, right, These CS guys are copps. So they then special powers that allowed them to yeah, right the roe as it left. Yeah, And so there there is a
criminal investigation right now into their actions. Did they use reasonable force? Did they did they violate the Fourth Amendment and killing this person? And there's a whole set of rules that go in with that. One of them is called garrity. So these officers are afforded what's called garrity, which is a famous court decision where you have to tell your agency. If your agency invokes your garrity rights, you have to tell them everything you did. But what you
tell your agency can't be used against you in a court of law. They have to do a separate criminal investigation, if that makes any sense. So those guys that fired, they're they're subject to a criminal investigation. Now, obviously they're going to be found that they used reasonable force. Right that guy had fired upon the former president. But still and typically during police lethal force encounters, you know, officers badge and guns are confiscated and they're given legal
counsel. So that's something that's not being talked about that when it's all said and done, the guys that pulled the trigger up there are cops that took somebody else's life. Now, obviously, clearly I think that was a reasonable use of force on they're going to be found that they used reasonable force in accordance with the Fourth Amendment and various court decisions like Graham v. Connor.
But you know, that's still very uncomfortable. You know, I've known lots of people that are involved in police shootings and they, you know, talk about how uncomfortable that is. Even when you're in the right, you still have to go through this criminal investigation. So that's one of the things Dave so are uh Davis, says Dave on the screen. But one of the things, d you know, The first thing is all these agents probably were got phone calls and emails. Hey you got to fly out. I don't
care if it's your son's wedding. I don't care if it's for firstborn child being born. You better get on a plane. And then the second thing is this criminal investigation about the police use of force. So again, who says you guys don't have breaking news. That's breaking news that nobody's talking about.
Is you know, these these officers that pull the trigger are going through a criminal investigation, so and you know, and then the third thing, it's there's going to be all these investigations about, hey, what happened, and they're going to have to figure out moving forward. Are there ways we can mitigate this threat? Are there ways that we can not let this happen again? Because the Secret Service has a zero fail mission, right, like
this can't happen ever happen again. Yeah, So I would say zero fail is a good way, really good way to describe it. You really intrigued me with the comment about the guarantee. Is it a guarantee law? But it's but it seems if I'm right, it provides it provides a means for law enforcement to really find out ground truth without without all the paraphernalia of an
investigation. In other words, yeah, hey, hey, you know, time out, tell us what happened, all right, this will not affect you, but tell us the truth so that we can prevent this happening again or whatever. Yeah yeah, yeah, sense yeah yeah, And so right, we have a right against self incrimination in this country, right, you have Fifth Amendment protections, and you cannot compel me to provide you information that might incriminate me. But they had to carve out this niche in the law
in the in the seventies. In this Garrity Court decision I think was Garrity versus New Jersey or it was a court case in New Jersey. Garrity was the officer where his agency said either tell us, well we want to know, or you're fired, and he got fired and then he sued in this court case, this famous court decision that all law enforcement officers talk about called your Guarrity rights, and it's exactly right, Andy. So there's like a
public safety exception there. So your agency wants to know, hey, did you use reasonable force? Uh, you know, when you killed this person, when you shot them, when you tasered them, and you have to tell them what happened. But anything you tell them cannot be used against you later in a criminal case, there has to be a separate criminal investigation, and they talk. There's actually they talk about a wall, all right.
So those two concurrent investigations, the investigators cannot talk to each other, all right, it's against the law. They can't speak with each other. So but in the same unit, within the same unit. Yeah, so that's really that's right. There's a firewall there. So the CS officers that pulled the trigger, you know what, they tell the Secret Service. The Secret Service then can't turn around and go to the FBI and say, hey, you know, guess what Andy Milburn told us. He told us X Y
Z. It can't happen. There has to be a wall there. So I imagine in the last twenty four hours there have been some very uncomfortable discs cushions between the FBI and the Secret Service. You know, the FBI probably is demanding answers. But in that particular case involving the agents that pulled the trigger, they have rights. And again they clearly followed their training right, clearly followed the law. They had every right to return force. But there
is a procedure in this country we have to follow. That's that that shows an unusually high amount for any bureaucracy, that shows an unusually high amount of common sense that the guarantee. I know, I mean, I get it. It didn't emerge as a as a safety mechanism imposed from above. It was you know, it was a guy challenging based on his own rights.
But nevertheless, it's a it's a tremendous safety mechanism. You know. Let's because investigations drag on forever and departments themselves kind of back into the hatches, don't they. Yeah. But I think a key part of this is it allows that agency to be open with the media in this sense of not hey he did this. You know, it's just hey, it's up for investigation, and there's no question of you know, are you wrongfully standing by him
or rightfully standing by him? You know, you've gone there's there's a procedure that that puts you I've been described it well, but I think it's a it's a it's a great system. I'd like to see that in the military, you know, Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, wasn't there a lot of debate recently in the military about taking the u CMJA away from like the person's commander or the accused commander, or yeah, that's the sexual assault. That's not you know, that's a because that was a case of Yeah,
the military. Military officers have lost their right to investigate sexual assault. You know, initially you do a what we call a p I, a preliminary investigation as commanding officer, and you no longer can do that, supposedly because so many officers have somehow fucked that up or painted their influence. But I but I'm talking about investigations into deaths, you know, accidental deaths, things like that, negligent discharges, things that go wrong in training or operations
that result in blue on blue casualties, all of these things. The Pat Tillman case is a great example, right, you know, I mean the guys, you know, I don't want to go into details in that case, but guys knew basically what had happened or suspected what had happened. But it you know, in that whole sorry mess. You know, the Army was embarrassed, the Ranger Regiment was embarrassed, and it caused unnecessarily suffering for
his family. But if they had something like guaranty, you know, because the guys want to tell the truth when it's something like that, you know, there's a period they want to and you know, but of course they don't want to you know. Yeah, away again we have we have fits themment protections in this country. You can't be forced to testify against yourself. So yeah, and that's like I said, those off ers that pulled the
trigger. You know, I've probably already spoken with legal counsel. They're probably are already represented. A lot of federal agents and officers are represented by FLIOA, which is called the Federal Lawenforcement Officers Association, which will provide legal counsel and major uses of force. So I'm sure they've spoken with their legal counsel and are represented by a lawyer. Bill, let me ask you, are
they out of the game now while this investigation goes on. I mean, I'm sure the investigation won't take like forever, but no, it's probably gonna take forever. But yeah, really they are. Yeah, I mean that every law enforcement agency in the country, if you're sworn and you carry a badging a gun which the uniform division officers are that are in these guys that are part of the CS team there that pulled the trigger. Yeah, they're
going to be relieved of their police powers. They're police temporarily relieved. And again clearly they did nothing wrong. They followed their training in the law. But there's still as a procedure in this country when you take someone's life and they're going to be relieved of their police powers pending an investigation. I mean, that's pretty standard protocol throughout the country. Now, I'll tell you I went to a training class once, probably before you were born, d in
like two thousand, two thousand and one. Yeah, and the guy was the guy teaching the class was this old retired Washington DC homicide detective. And the guy had retired in like nineteen ninety, but he was now teaching, so he'd been retired, you know, fifteen years when he was teaching this class. And he said his first day on the job as a DC police
officer was in the early seventies. And his training officer, he gets in the car and his training officer some old haggard you know, Vietnam vett who's chained smoking, and he says, hey, kid, pull up tinto this bodega and he gives a kid a couple bucks and says, go in and get me some smokes. Well, this brand new officer from DC Police,
he walks into this boat dega and it's being robbed. He walks into a robbery in progress, pulls out his gun, challenges him, kills the two robbers right, kills the two robbers, and you know, their sergeants called to the scene, and you know, within about thirty minutes they pat him on the back and they're like, hey, great job kid, let's get back out there. And they go back in the car and start patrolling. Wow, you know, we don't do we don't do that anymore in this
country, right, you know, you get the coffee. I don't know, I never added it, but yeah, I mean that's how it used to be. You know, back in the day, it was like, hey, great kid, like dirty Harry. You know, you're just going out exactly like that. And you know, let's also not forget, you know again breaking news here. Uh, you know, let's not forget. It's easy to thump our chest right and say, oh, these guys took out a threat, but when you take somebody's life, that can have a
traumatic effect. That's a signal difficant life event for you. Right, you took somebody's life, no matter how reasonable it was, no matter how legal, no matter if you did your job. These guys might have some trauma with that, you know, So they are probably gonna need counseling. A lot of agencies have mandatory psychological counseling after you're involved in a traumatic event. As a first responder. I've been involved in lots of traumatic events from you
know, the death of a child. I was on a call a couple of years ago where a four year old had her head crushed run over by a car. And you know, my partner at the time scooped up this little girl and ran her to an ambulance, and he was covered in blood and brain matter of a you know, a little girl. So I don't care how tough you are, that's gonna have an effect. And you know, he came to me and and to our sergeant and said, hey, I need to go home and change my clothes. And I don't think I'm
coming back the rest of this shift. Right, that has an effect on you. And I mean, I'm sure, Jason Andy Military guess I'm sure you have some perspective on that where you know, especially the first time you you do take a life, right, it can be traumatic. I think probably in the United States makes it even worse. I know people are going to criticize me for that, but what I what I mean by that is when we deploy, we're in a context, we switch. You know.
It's not that everything becomes a target, of course, not counterinsurgency. But the point is that you're you know, your your alert stat chair, everything goes up and you are expecting threat and you have already you've already kind of you should have hardened yourself to taking casualties and taking life, you know. I mean that is part of the preparation, the bulletproofed mind. If you're a good commander, you prepare your troops for that. But it's but I
think it's so much harder. Probably I had never been a cop, but I imagine it's so much harder as a cop for a number of reasons. I you know, operating in in a day to day the environment and then suddenly suddenly out of the blue, being confronted with that kind of tragedy. I think that is I think that is probably more overwhelming, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah, I mean I can tell you from personal experience.
You know, my daughter's nine. When she was just a few months old, I was called to the scene of a death of a child and the child, unfortunately had a terminal illness. The child was about four years old, had a terminal illness, and they were able to get a little bit of a heartbeat race the child. I followed the ambulance to the emergency room, and you know, I go into the emergency room and I have a job to do, right, I have to figure out was this child the
victim of abuse? How did this happen? And so I'm speaking with the father outside the exam room and asking him, Hey, how did this happen? And the dad says, listen, we have been to you know, every elite hospital in the country to try to find a cure my son suffered from X y Z. As I'm interviewing him, the mom is in the room in the exam room. We could hear her wails and telling the son, Hey, it's okay to let go. We love you so much.
You fought so hard. I'm listening to that right as I'm interviewing the dad and I tried to be right. I fancy myself a tough guy. You know, you want to go work out. You know how far, how fast we run in, you know how much we lift in. I fancy myself a tough guy. That crushed me. Man. I did my job right. It found out that the child was not a victim of abuse, that was a terminal illness. And left that call, and I went in a parking lot and cried my eyes out right, called my wife, you
know, hey, can you go kiss our daughter for us? And cried my eyes out and guess what. Five minutes later, I get another call and I have to go handle that. So you're exactly right, Andy, It's a lot different than being in combat in the military, where you you know, you can go to your mission and then you go back to your base and maybe you play PlayStation or watch movies, you know, in law enforcement you got to go home, and it's just it's just a different dynamic.
Yeah, wow, Andy, Well you know that's that's an overwhelming moment too. I think to to to end on because we did promise Bill that we would get him out of there in half an hour and lie to him as we have done. But but who's going to stop him? Man? I mean that was that was not just fascinating, but really impactful and usually don't use that time, I hate it, but it really was. Thank you, Thank you Bill ye absolute yeah, and the rest of you for
being here. Thanks Andy so much, really appreciate you. Are there any questions do? I know sometimes people post questions, Yeah, this isn't live so yeah, so I is going to go out today later today. Hey. The only question we have been is uh the we'd like to bring you on again, you know as this uh, as as this develops. That's not really a question. That was an instruction. Yeah, so I got colonel, colonel and Millburn's back. Yeah, give you give your wife a
heads up. I mean that was that was terrific, not not just about this particular event, but I learned a time. So yeah. Yeah, so listen as we this thing progresses, you know, they'll probably be newsbreaking today, tomorrow, the next day. Yeah. De He's got my number, text or all anytime. Although you know, I'm happy to be a resource. I'm a big fan. Every year I saw I swear I'm going to make the damn Christmas party, and I just have by this year.
Yeah, yeah, we we all need to make a commitment to do it this. I'm having a separate, separate bond party. I will be there. Ye eyes On might have its own social media, got it, I got it. The real question is why is Jack in Paris with the Frenchies. He was actually in Ireland and I think he went to Paris for like a stopover or maybe for a few days with his daughter. Okay, he's back now, Okay, all right, Well, yeah, you guys use
me as a resource call text anytime. Thanks, Hey, best of luck, guys, hie everyone, guys, don't forget a couple of things, little housekeeping, Andy Milburn buill do you have anything to plug? All right? Uh yeah, I mean you know you guys. You know I'm a senior consultant with Safe and Security Group. We do a lot of security and so and I know some of your audience are probably not in the market for security company, but we do a lot of Fortune five hundred companies, physical
security, executive protection, a lot of threat assessment. Like I talked about, where we're really going into someone's background, whether a current employee, former employee, I rate customer. You'd be surprised I'm a fortune five hundred companies out there, the people that they're hiring these days. And uh so,
yeah, I'm a senior consult we Safe Have and Security. We've recently done some pretty high profile executive protection gigs with some different individual I don't want to give their names, but sure, but yeah, that's where I'm at now, Safe and Security Group. Great. All right, so Bill suit me that link and the link will be in description in the show notes. You guys can check it out there. Andy Milburn, of course, his book
is great. Check out his previous episode that we just did with the Teamhouse on Friday. Crazy really good, really good. Uh, what's been going on in the last two years? And unbelievable Libya's story where Andy did not follow the rules but it worked out well. Yeah, and Patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse. Please help support the show. YouTube is destroying us. I'm not lying, I swear to God. Patreon dot com Slash the Teamhouse. Thanks guys, this is great. Thanks