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