The Greatest Journey: From Combat to Community Service

In this episode, Juette interviews Chris Strom, a former Marine, NYPD officer, and intelligence operations expert. Chris shares his journey from a challenging childhood on Long Island to Marine Corps service, then to policing New York City during the crack epidemic. He details his transition to intelligence work, his role in counterterrorism post-9/11, and his experiences in military intelligence overseas. Chris also honors fallen comrades and discusses the importance of communication, integrity, and teamwork in law enforcement and military operations, offering listeners insight into the human side of service and sacrifice.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm really happy to have Chris Strum and he is
really accomplished intelligence operations. Uh individual uh came highly recommended
by one of our other guests, Kevin Young did a tour,
like a significant tour twenty years I guess in New York. Yes, sir,
and also served in the Marine Corps and served overseas.

(00:30):
I'm really I think he's really cool your story. I
can't wait for some of the other people to hear it.
I'm really glad that you're here and just looking forward
to getting into your story.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I appreciate that very much. Youd, thanks so much for
having me. And before we get started, I just want
to give you a challenge coin from the NYPD stugeant
benevolent Associations, go, will this.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Get me out of a ticket in New York? It
might or might It depends on how states the state
Police they probably will give me.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Probably not the State Police, but maybe so with.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
No I really appreciate that. That is super super cool.
I think y'all are the gold standards. You really are
in New York as the cold standard. I can't say
much about your candidate from mayor, but I mean we'll
talk about that more later so let's just talk a
little bit about where you were born, just a little
bit on your background, and then just work from there.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah. Sure, I grew up on Long Island, and like
a lot of kids, parents got the voice when I
was very young. I ended up living with my grandparents,
who were amazing people and gave me a great moral
compass and religious foundation. And my dad wasn't really involved
in my life. And I'm not saying that because I
want sympathy. I'm just trying to be painting a picture

(01:40):
of what life was. I was with my grandparents and
they were very, very strict, but they were beautiful, loving
people and gave me structure in life. And then at
some point in time, my mom had remarried to an
individual and he had seven kids, so there was three
of us and seven of them, and.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
What the full house.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
It became like an insane asylum. And that marriage did
not last, and I ended up back with my grandfather.
My grandmother had since passed away, and I was starting
to get into trouble. I didn't really have much direction
in my life, and I knew if I didn't join
the Marine Corps or do something positive with my life,
it was only a matter of time. The writing was
on the wall. I was hating going to school, I

(02:21):
was kind of hating my life. And I can remember
as a young kid going to this one particular shopping
wall and they had like a free standing building where
they had a recruiting station and it was the Marines.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
And it was.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Funny enough that you would get off the bus and
it was right there as soon as you got off
the bus, so.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
You couldn't miss it.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
So they had like a captive audience of young people
like myself getting off there. And I remember how sharp
they looked. And this is long before they had like
social media and commercials and ad campaigns to kind of
entice you. Everything was kind of like, hey, what do
you come out over here, young man? And they introduced yourself,
and so at seen, I decided to join the Marine Corps.

(03:02):
My parents, my dad and my mom had to sign
off and give me permission, and I arrived in Paras, Island.
I think it was May of nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
And uh, never in Paris.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Oh my gosh. It is a whole different kind of
like New York swampy hot, really really really human typing thing,
and you know, they have all these movies and videos
of people getting on the yellow footprints, and then the
screaming just started.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
So as soon as I seek touchdown on the yellow footprints,
You're like, here we go.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
And then that, you know, the whole indoctrination process and
yelling and screaming. And so I'm sitting there, laying in bed,
and I'm saying to myself, I don't know if I'm
going to make this. You know, I'm seventeen, and I'm
like terrified. And just a bunch of other people there
that are much older than me, and you know, some
are from the East coast, some are from the West coast,
West coast, some are from Middle America. And I think,

(03:55):
if I remember right, we had about roughly forty some
odd people and when we started the platoon, when we
finally started doing all the things that you have to do,
and I think we only graduated just shy of thirty people.
So there was a lot of attrition, and each week
it was like somebody else was leaving or getting left back.
And I kind of remember that whole psychological thing.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
But so quick question, I know that I don't know
what it's like. I obviously don't know what it's like
in the Marine Corps. But I remember our zero day
when we went down range with the Army. I remember
laying in bed similar to what you're talking about, like
we just got smoked. We hadn't did they have cattle
trucks back then where they've been cattle trucks, and like
everybody's packed in there. Next thing, you know, the dude

(04:38):
that's facing you is ripped out of the back of
the truck and then the screaming and yelling begins. But
that night I remember hearing a bunch of grown men
going like and I was like, man, this sucks. This
is I don't like you. I was like, I don't
think I'm gonna survive it. But it was did y'all
do the countdown twenty days in a wake up or whatever?

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Well, what was what was happening was because we did
not have enough people initially to start, like we had
to wait for so.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
You were in the reception stace and just getting smoked
every day every day.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
So like the first two weeks didn't count because our
platoon hadn't filled up, and then there was.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Two so you didn't even have a graduation date until
you went down right.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
No, did not. We did not have a graduation date.
So and it was funny so to your point, they
would actually say, how do you feel today? Recruits, you know,
and sir, graad, sir, they got good because this day
didn't count either, like that, and they just kept like
laying it on like, you know, you haven't even begun
the process.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
It sucks, but you haven't really started.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
So we'll let you know when your first date is.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
So where were you assigned first? After you graduated?

Speaker 2 (05:40):
I went to Millington, Tennessee for Aviation School, my A school,
and I got picked up for what they called aviation ordnance,
and from there I got my specialty and I got
assigned to hm A two sixty nine, which is helicopter
marine tax Water in New River, North Carolina, not far
from Campbells Junon down the road actually from Campbell's June

(06:03):
and I spent the rest of my time there and
I worked on the Cobra helicopters, which was pretty cool.
I got to fly every once in a while, I
got to get some flight time in the front seat.
But I also did sixteen months at sea because it's
a deployable squadron.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So so you were on a boat. What are they
call I sorrved all the navy people, It's a ship.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
It's a ship. I got the ship.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah, so you were stuck on a ship for how long?

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I think the first the first time I went out
was a little over six months, and I think the
second time it was like eight months because something had
happened in Algeria and they were we were basically floating
around there just in case some kind of hostilities broke out,
and then there was an earthquake in Tunisia, so they
wanted us there in case it was going to be
like a betavack cat.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
How was the food in the navy?

Speaker 2 (06:50):
The food was actually pretty good, pretty good, I have
to say.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
I mean, you know, no complaints.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, there wasn't too many skinny sailors if I remember right, So,
I mean, you know it there was food and plenty
of it. If you wanted it, it was it was.
But I'll tell you what. Like the living conditions. You know,
you're literally if you have any kind of claustrophobic issues
or you don't like people bumping into you or touching you,
I mean there's not enough room to pass each other

(07:16):
between the bunks. There's probably I don't know, maybe seven
or eight inches above your head from the bunk above you.
And and if you're on the top bunk and you
have to come down and you're on the bottom bunk,
you know it's.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Not how high is it two bunks? I think it's
more four.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
I remember you have the bottom one, the second, third,
and fourth, and if you're on the fourth bunk, you
have to climb down. And depending on where you are
on that food chain, you're getting woken up each time
the guy goes up and down.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
So you want the top bunk even I don't know,
or maybe three.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's three the premium, I guess probably, so, yeah, because
you might be able to skip that because it's not
that much of a separation between the two to kind
of climb yourself out.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
But number four is not stepping on you coming out. Yeah,
but one or two sucks.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
I was on. I was on the first ship I
was on was the Ewogma. I think they decommissioned it.
It's probably a museum at this point. But they had
the old school bunks where it was basically almost like
with the like your beach chair, like the slats of
like fabric going both ways and just a rubber mattress
on top of that. So I mean it was very
very very very close.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Well they both don't move that much at oh.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
No, no, no, they're like it's like Carnival cruise, you know,
you just you know, it's very smooth, very uh.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
You know in no smell of diesel fuel right now.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Nothing like beautiful jet fuel. Planes taken off, and it's
very quiet, you know when they say lights out, everybody's
everybody's quiet.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Nothing you don't hear about after dark.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
No hum of engines, no anything. It's very peaceful.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
So you get out of the Marine Corps. What happens?

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Then? I ended up doing a couple of different jobs.
And I always knew I wanted to be a cop,
so I applied for the NYPD, filled out all the
paperwork that did the application process, and I got cold
in uh in January of eighty seven to go into
the academy. There was a couple of detours along the way,
but I remember going to the academy and at this

(09:06):
point in time, I'm living back on Long Island and
I'm commuting in and are you commuting in by car?
By car? And it's just so people can't probably can't
even imagine this, depending on their age. We actually had
to throw quarters into a basket to get through the
Midtown Tunnel. That's where how I would get in. Now

(09:26):
this it's all easy pass and you just drive. But
if you can imagine, you know, one hundred thousand people
and number six lanes of traffic trying to go into
Lower Manhattan, because that's where the academy was at the time,
was on the West twentieth Street and Second Avenue. You
got online, even though that was the faster way as
opposed to actually handing somebody money. But if a couple

(09:50):
of times it was. What was so funny about it
was you would throw the money and sometimes it would
bounce one of the coins would bounce out, and so
the gate would come down midway as you're trying to
transgress cress through it and.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
People, I know, people in New York are fairly patient.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Well yeah, I mean, like you know, horn honking is
down to an art form deb.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Right, you can probably sing a song with them.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, you're holding us all up.
What the heck you know, and things like that.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Right, So you go to the academy, how many people
did you have in the academy?

Speaker 2 (10:16):
A thousand?

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (10:18):
So they did split shifts, so they you would do
a week of days and then a week of nights,
and then the same thing with the other five hundred people.
So we would go in the morning, then there would
be in the afternoon shift. They came in at like three,
three to eleven. I think we went seven to three
something like that, and then we would switch and that
went on for I think about six months and.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
When y'all graduate, if I'm understand it right, I talked
to somebody that went to NYPD. Did they do it
at the where did they do graduate? Now?

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Sometimes at Madison's. Yeah, I mean, because you could imagine
if that many people a thousand people, and you multiply
that times family members and children and things like that,
you know, you could easily have twenty five thirty thousand people.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
But that is one thing about the PD in New York,
Like they go big, don't they on celebrations They okay.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, they're very family oriented, and there's a lot of tradition.
There's a lot of colloquialisms and things that that's I
think separated apart onto onto the n y.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
P so your first assignment, where were you assigned?

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I was in Coney Island, Brooklyn, So we'll go on preacing. Well, Uh,
Coney Island, Brooklyn is an interesting place because they have
a boardwalk they used to do I was kind of
like a beach. Well it's it's so the NYPD training,
like they divided all up is what they call UH
Neighborhood Stabilization Units. So it's called an n s U.

(11:36):
So that's just where I happened to be in in
in Brooklyn. But there's different training units this some there's
ones in the Queens, this ones in the Bronx, and
in Manhattan obviously, but I just happened to get Brooklyn.
But the boardwalk was part of it. But then there
was other residential areas and commercial businesses and things like that.
But a lot of days when you weren't doing field

(11:57):
training with the sergeant, that would be my foot on
the boardwalk, you know. So I'm like, this is pretty cool. Know,
this isn't bad, you know what I mean? But you know,
you're so new and you don't really have any kind
of you know where with all like you know, you
know the basics of police arek but you're really not
a cop. You're still in train. You need somebody to
kind of you need.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Somebody to guide you.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Absolutely, so you get that's your first assignment. Where do
you go from there?

Speaker 2 (12:21):
From there? I went to the one on one Precinct
in Queen's and I was there for thirteen years and
it is one of the most It is the most
southern precinct and most eastern precinct. So it boarded up
on Nasa County, which worked out well because I eventually
met my wife and I would literally go over the

(12:42):
Atlantic Beach Bridge and be home in time to watch
the Dave Letterman monologue, you know, after I got off
at eleven thirty.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Because y'all did y'all work twelve hour shifts, so.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
We worked eight hours thirty five. So the three there's
three shifts. And then initially when we when I came
on the job, we call it the job the end.
That's one of the things that the NYP equals. Please
for the job, we would do rotating shifts, so you
do like a week of days, a week of nights,
and then every eighth week or seventh week or eighth

(13:10):
week you would do a midnight shift, which everybody hated,
nobody wanted. Nobody wanted to do it.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
But I would think that New York stays busy as
twenty four to seven.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well, you have to remember now this is nineteen eighty seven,
so crack the crack war is raging. It is. It
is like out of the chain violence in the street,
people being shot. Not that that's not happening today, but
it was happening.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
They kind of shocked everybody's system.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, and the and the level of violence, and the
and the crimes associated with the property crimes, the homicides.
I can remember working in the in the one on
one precinct, and you know, this is the cop mentality,
the macarb sense of humor. It got to the point
we had nineteen homicides in one year. So my partner
at the time was this fellow named Jimmy Halley, and

(13:58):
we were we were first on the scene for seven
out of the nineteen. That's how that's how violent and
how bad it was. And it got the point where
we would flip a coin to see who would have
to go to the morgue the next day to identify
the body. So here we are, it's New Year's Eve.
I'll never forget this. I can't remember what year it is.
I think it was before I had met my wife,
or soon soon before I met my wife. And there's

(14:19):
a homicide and it's in the breezeway of this apartment building.
And we get there and we find the guy and
he's laying face down. We figure he's shot or dead
or whatever like that. We roll him over. Turned out
he was shot in the face, but the bullet didn't
exit out of his skull, and so we flipped the coin.
Who you know, who's going to have to go? Now

(14:40):
it's New Year's Eve, right, everybody just this is the
Ford twelve. Everybody wants to go somewhere other than being
here and doing police work or especially getting up at
five o'clock in the morning to meet the corner to
identify the body. And so I lost the coin to us.
So New Year New Year's Eve was not good that
that year.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
So you go through any interesting patrol stories before we
go into your intel work.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
I mean, I loved patrol. I was active. I did
a lot of there was a lot of street robberies.
I was like very good at that type of thing, like,
and that was also good with stolen cars and identifying
because back in the day they were stealing Hondas and Toyota.
It's not that they aren't now, but they were stealing
them very frequently, and they would reeve in or retake

(15:28):
the car. So I had an eye for something like that,
and I liked that.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
But there was certain things that you looked at and oh.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, yeah, like I knew right away, like this was
a smoke show that the smoke screen rather that this
guy is this car is not legit, even though he
has a piece of paper that says it's legally registered
and everything like that. And so through some investigation and
some other things you would find you tied back up.
Yeah it was. It was ta was teddy.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Any of them tied to anything major that you worked
from patrol to push towards it.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Well, yeah, a lot of them were related to like
chop shops, so chops up. Somebody would steal, they put
in order and literally put in a checklist for a car.
They went back and they would steal the car, and
then they would take the car, and they would steal
take a salvage car and take the VN from that
car and put it back on this car. And of course,
you know, if it's done really well, then you can't tell.

(16:13):
But now it's like it's it's almost impossible to do
to redo that. But this is back in the eighties
and nineties, so the technology is not what it was
you know what it is today. So it wasn't that wasn't.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
That hard to piece to get? Yeah, so you get
done with patrol, talk about going into the intel unit.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Well, I ended up. I ended up taking the sergeant's test,
and I get promoted to sergeant and they send me
to the seven to six precinc which probably doesn't mean
much for your audience, but where I am geographically in
terms of where I live and in my commute to
the one on one precinct, but that was probably a

(16:51):
seven mile community. This is a twenty nine mile or
twenty eight miles, but twenty nine miles in the country, no,
And so my commute would take anywhere from an hour
and fifteen to an hour and thirty minutes to go
to work coming home, not so much. It wasn't that
wasn't that bad. And I get to the seven sixth Precinct.
I've been in Queen's now for thirteen years, and now

(17:12):
I'm in Brooklyn, and I don't know anything about Brooklyn.
I used to drive through Brooklyn like Atlantic Avenue, seven
five precinc with the windows up and just try and
get through it as fast as possible. And then you know,
Manhattan was even I had even less familiarity with. And
then I ended up working in this great preacting the
seven sixth Precinct, and there was a narcotics unit within

(17:33):
that precinct. And apparently the guy that was running the
unit together, the sergeant, he was having some family issues.
And the captain had approached me and said, hey, you know,
because I had just come from a robbery unit, it
was in a robbery unit for four years, and he said,
would you mind taking this over? And I said, well,
I don't mind taking it over, but I said, let
me discuss it with my wife. And basically I was
trying to borrow a time. So I approached the sergeant

(17:55):
that was running, you know, and I'm like, hey, look,
the captain just asked me to take over this unit.
I don't know what's going on. I go, I'll just
tell him I'm not interested. I'm not here to step
on anybody's you know, toes or anything like that. And
he said, no, take it, he goes, I would appreciate it.
So from that I inherit this team of the most
amazing people, beautiful, smart, like the United Nations. Who's Puerto Rican,

(18:18):
who's Dominican, Who's Jewish, Who's Polish, Who's Italian? And we
were going out there and we were just tearing it up.
I mean literally, Well now I'm in the Red Hook
houses and the Guana's houses, and they were slinging crack,
but not so much crack anymore. Now it's heroin. It
changed over. There was an evolution, I think. Yeah. So

(18:38):
it was haroin and cocaine for the most part. So
we're doing the same thing like traditional police work. We're
doing like you know, field observation, picking off the buyers
and then picking the picking the cellar off, flipping them
and doing search warms and things like that. And then
nine to eleven had happened, so we're again in the
in the precinct in the seven to six So graphically,

(19:00):
just for context, when you go down Atlantic Avenue, which
is like the northern boundary of the seven to sixth
preecinc you're at the East River. So if you look
across the East River, you're looking at the trade centers,
and you're looking at the Staten Island Ferry Tunnel, and
if you look to your left, you see the Statue
of Liberty. So that's kind of like where I am.
But one of the things that connects Brooklyn with Lower

(19:21):
Manhattan is the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. So you drive through
that tunnel and when you come up, you're you're facing
the trade center of the world, the Trade Towers. So
when nine to eleven happened, I had changed my tour
and I'm working with my detective Ginger, and I changed
my tour to do it, to do a day tour,

(19:43):
and she did. She said I want to. I want
to do it too. Whatever do you mind if I work?
And I said no, you could be my drive or whatever.
So we went into a restaurant to get coffee and
we turned our radio sound because it was you know,
we're in plain clothes, we're trying not to you know,
to start people, and we're going to get it to
go right. So we come out and turned the radio
back up, and now I'm seeing the trade. I can

(20:04):
see right right in front of me. The trade is
on fire. The one Trade Center and I turned the
radio up and the radio is going insane. So i
parked on Columbian Congress Street and I'm literally on the
phone with my wife and I'm like, I don't know
what's going on. The trade center's on fire. She goes,
I see it cause my wife worked in the hospital.
And she goes, oh, I see we have the TV on.

(20:26):
I like that. And with that, second plane literally flies
past me, in front of me and hits the second
tower in the South Tower, and the explosion was such
that it literally shook the car the shockwave. So I
was like, listen, I gotta go. So from that, I
was there for three days and then I finally, you know,

(20:47):
go home. But I was my primary station initially was
at the battery tunnel, which I was talking about before.
So now what happened is because of the building and
all the madness, the people were trapped in the tunnel.
They can't go out, they can't get in, they can't
get out on both on boat tubes, the inbound and
the outbound. And then when the tower fell, the ventilation

(21:07):
pipes or the ventilation fans rather that pulled the exhaust
out of the tunnel, so that people don't get you know,
over carbon monoxide is now sucking in all the dust
and debris, so now there's no lights. These people are panicked,
they're you know, they're panic. We have tow trucks coming
and they're trying to create a lane so that emergency
vehicles can get in as opposed to trying to go

(21:29):
up to the Brooklyn Bridge and then come back south
down the FDR. And it was like, so that's what
we were doing. So I was triaging people, ambulances were
their tow trucks were there, and finally we would get
a lane cleared so that the fire trucks can get
in there. But by that point it was it was
too late. Everything it was it was too late, you
it was basically it was just crazy. From that, they

(21:54):
were looking for people to go into the Intelligence division.
I didn't want to leave my narcotics But the backstory
to that was my son had gotten really, really sick
with RSV and he spent nine days in the nick
U unit, but there was going to be some recovery
time with him. So the captain that put me in
the narcotics unit he had gotten transferred and there was

(22:15):
a new captain and now he's asking me to take
the field intelligence officer spot, and I don't want to
leave the narcotics team. And I don't want to go because.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
That was good work and you were good at it,
and you had a good team.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
And had a great team, and I have steady days
off and I'm very comfortable on it. Nobody really likes change,
but that captain had gotten me off for eight weeks
full pay to be home with my son, so I
definitely owed him big time. His name is he's I
don't know if he's still on a job. His name
is David BarreR, an amazing human being. And so I said,
for you, boss, anything and he goes, look, if it

(22:45):
doesn't work out and you don't like it, he goes,
I'll give you a soft landing. You can come work
for me in this other presetingc that he had gotten
assigned to as the CEO. So I go in there
and it's like the same thing all over again, you know,
And now I know even less because I was a
street guy for thirteen years. I was in the sty
I was not an inside but you.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Already knew how to talk to people, You already knew
how to pull information it's just using their model to
collect it.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, but again all unfamiliar faces and starting all over again.
And you know, these are some very smart people, and
these are all seasoned detectives that I'm working with, and uh,
and you're their supervisor, and I'm supposed to tell them
what to do, but in reality, they were telling me
what to do. They were but they but they were
very gracious about and amazing human beings, uh, and super
smart people. So I get in there and the same

(23:31):
same kind of thing happened. We all become like a family.
We bond together, and we start doing investigations and it's
it's starting to it's starting to take off. I get
involved in that a double homicide, and we kind of
solved We kind of solved that case, and then the
US Attorney's Office ends up taking over the case. But
the case in and of itself was was the double homicide.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
What was unique about that that the FEDS wanted to take.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
It it was it was a mob a mob hit.
It was actually a drive by some guy in a
motorcycle went up to a social club in the seven
sixth precinct and they pulled out a gun, went into
the social club, and killed two people, and but nobody
else these two specific people, right, And it had remained
unsolved for about seven years. And so I ended up

(24:18):
geting because I had been working in the seven sixth
preecings and it had developed a reputation. Somebody had come
in and wanted to give me information about it, and
then from that we started doing So we're.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Not talking about somebody like going across the street. We're
talking about somebody having to make that same distance that
you had to make to get to you. But they
remembered you and new We're.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, apparently, apparently I must have treated them right as
opposed to how I was initially when I was a cop,
where I didn't treat people as nice as I probably
should have.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
But the system we discussed that earlier. The system wasn't
set up for like having a pleasant interaction with somebody
or even together information because you were on a you
were on a clock, and you were dependent on an
outside entity to approve your charges.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yeah, that was that was definitely the biggest part of it.
Was there was no if there was any mentoring at all.
The mentoring was what you got, So if you were
a bad communicator and that was your partner, then you
probably you're probably going to be a bad communicator too,
because you're kind of like learning from each other, right
and until somebody kind of like takes you by the
hand or you realize my way is not working. And

(25:20):
you know, again, I did four years. I spent four
years in a marine corps. I was convinced I had
convinced myself that I was the smartest person in the room.
I legitimately thought that, you know, I mean that nobody
was going to be able to tell me differently or
teach me. You know. I was very hard headed, and
but eventually I matured a little bit and I started
seeing different people the way they interacted with people and

(25:41):
their communication skills, and I said, I want to be
like that guy. And one of the guys that who
I'm still in touch with this day, I see him
at least once or twice a year in New York
for dinner, is this friend of my Tommy days, who
was an amazing gifted detective and knows more about Italian
organized crime than any any detective in the world. He
is the Google encyclopedia of Italian organized crime.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
So what was unique about him? I know, you were
talking about it earlier, and I think it's kind of cool,
like when you worked different assignments inside of a department.
So he was in organized organized crime. So everybody had
a nickname, right yeah, so yeah, so his name was
Tommy White Shoes. He always wore white sneakers and they

(26:25):
were like uh he and his hair was always perfect
and he always wored like T shirts. And he's probably
one of the most unassuming, humble people you'd ever meet,
but the nicest guy. Like but just a just an encyclopedia.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
There's there's no he grew up. It's he grew up
like something out of a movie, surrounded by all these
Italian social clubs in Marine Park, Brooklyn, which was notorious
at the time for for organized crime, and he grew
up with it. He he is personal friends with Sammy
de bou Gravano, if that gives you any kind.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Of con So he knows, he knows the people.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
He knows the people. And but what's so amazing about
him is that he had and this is what I
learned from him. Many things, but one of the most
important things I learned from him is that don't over
promise and under deliver. If you give somebody your word
you're going to do something. I don't care what it is,
you have to do it. And he prided himself on that,

(27:25):
and so he had a reputation where people in that
in that realm, in that organization knew that, Yeah, Tommy
arrested me, but you know what, he treated me right,
and he did make any consideration that I got or
asked for. He made it known and he did this
best to make that happen.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
So he kept his side of the bargain. If they
provided information, he kept his side.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
So talk a little bit about how that intelligence cycle
works for you. Somebody comes to another another precinct and says, hey,
I have information on a seven year old homicide. I
think one of the things that we do in law
enforce sometimes we dismissed people outright, well they're this or that,
and then but you didn't do that and it worked out. Well.
Talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, you know, it takes time, Like if you develop
a reputation as somebody that like my friend Tommy was amazing,
they write books about the he's just on all kinds
of different talk shows. When you developed that reputation, it's
not overnight. So if you were the bad cop like
I was the bad cop, or actually bad cop, like

(28:29):
bad bad like did bad things, but I just was
a bad communicator. When you when you start to develop
this professional reputation, just like you and I are talking
about cops in the cop in the cop world, or
we go to a wedding and we you know, hey,
you know what's going on or whatever. You know, the
bad guys are doing the same thing, especially if they're
in jail because they have nothing else to do but
talk about their circumstances and commiserate on their misery of

(28:52):
why they're there. But similarly, if they talk about cops too,
and they're like, oh, I you know, I knew that
guy whatever. He's a shooter, he's a straight shooter. And
he did right.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
I mean I did wrong, but like he held me
accountable for what I did wrong. But he didn't. He didn't,
he didn't come to like it was a measured response
from you, like you did what you needed to do,
but you treat him like a human being.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
And yes, and more over than that, if if there
was something you could do, in other words, if they
wanted something they wanted to see, if you could help
them out and work off their time. You would, you know,
you would say to them, I don't know if I
can do that. Let me speak to the district attorney
or the commonwealth attorney and see what they do and
and and then say, but I will get back to

(29:34):
you either way, regardless of what their decision is.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
I think that's one of the coolest things about the
federal system. I think is once they're called, they have
they have an opportunity to come in there, and it's
the first step for them to go through. It is
acceptance of responsibility. They have to accept what you've charged
them with, and then they can get substantial assistance. And
so I think, like to me, that is a starting
point for any you know, once you make an arrest,

(29:59):
like you, your whole career was moving your way up,
like going taking the next wrong Talk about that from
from your standpoint. You have a heroin addict that comes
in and tells you information about a seven year old homicide.
Most people are going to go, Okay, yeah, that's seven
years ago. A lot of really smart people worked this
case and never got anywhere. How is it different for.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
You, Well, like I said, I had gone through like
a maturation process, and I learned how to be a
better communicator. And when I met this guy, he was
he was a heroin addict and so obviously, you know,
you go through a vetting process and you want to,
you know, do some some very small level things to
see if he's true. But when he said that about

(30:40):
the homicide, he knew intimate details more than what I knew. So,
for example, that case was when he expressed that he
knew about a seven year old homicide, You're like, I
didn't even know about this. It's not like I'm always
here and here, so this is like old news.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, so you have to it's important to somebody, but
it wasn't on your radar.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Right exactly. So when I did a little bit of digging,
you know, it's one of these things where I'm trying
to verify what he knew. So I got a hold
of the files from that from that case, and I
spoke to one of the detectives that was involved in
the case, not the lead detective. And then from there
you realize, I need information from you so I can
ask him another question, so I can go through this
vetting process because you know, for all I know, he's

(31:19):
just another guy that read it in the newspaper, right,
because I don't know enough intimate details. I don't have
fidelity on this particular case. So that that's kind of
like how things start to go along. And then it
becomes like, well, the guy that's responsible for it is
this one guy, so he can't get the actual first
hand account. He has hearsay information, but we need we

(31:40):
need first hand account. Well, how do you going to
how are you going to get first hand account? Well,
you got to move up the food chain. You got
to get the next guy that can give you the
next guy that can give you the guy.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
But he wanted to, but he knew who was involved.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Everybody knew on the street, everybody kind of you start,
so that.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
At that point it's pretty much targeting. At that point
is like, Okay, here's the here's the flow charge of
here's the person at the top. Here's a person that
pulled the trigger or the persons that pulled the trigger,
and these are components to it. It's like picking fruit,
low hanging fruit and pede yourself on the way out.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
Right, because we needed we needed the guy, not so
much the trigger guy would be nice, but at the
end of the day, the trigger guy still has to
give you. The guy that put it out put it
out right, and so it's a it's a whole. And
again the trigger guy. Is he still alive or did
they kill the trigger guy? Because you know, if he's dead,
he can't really tell you who told him to do it.

(32:31):
So and of course I did. This is all all
things I did not know about the case. But we
eventually learned from the case and and so we so
we ended up moving with the investigation, moved along. But
again getting back to the intel cycle, if you have
pure if you have poor communication skills, if you can't
engage this person and get him to trust you and

(32:53):
believe you, again, you're selling yourself to this person. People
were like, I'm not going to lower myself to talk
to a heron at Well, well, then maybe you should
go back to patrol, right, you should just write tickets
or you know, do some other job that that is
technically police work, because this is real police work, right,
and not everybody can do it. And I'm not saying
that I'm the best at it, but I but I

(33:15):
will say that I work with some of the best people.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
No, that's exactly right. I think that's one of the
coolest things about having this podcast is bringing people like
I feel like my story is pretty good, but like
I've got I've got dudes coming on here like you
that like have this significant wealth of information and you're
saying the same thing everyone else is saying, is like,
I work with some really good dudes and it does

(33:37):
seem to wear off, you know, like we're on to
other people. And I think that's what's cool about it.
So absolutely, but so so your case, you work through
the case, and then what happens so well.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
They end up reassigning me from that case. They moved
me from the from the precinct into now this the
what they call the leads desk. So if you can imagine,
there's the JT and then that's.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
The Joint Terrorism and then those were created after nine
to eleven. Correct, that's correct, And just explain that real quick.
How what's the concept of that.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Well, it's we were so we did not have our
eye on the ball in terms of counter terrorism, and
so basically that's how the expansion of the NYPD Intelligence
Division came about. But before prior to nine to eleven,
even the NYPD Intelligence Division, which was relatively small at
the time, was focused on criminal they were not focused

(34:32):
on counter terrorism. Well after nine to eleven, Ray Kelly
came in and said, yeah, whatever they the FBI is doing,
they suck at it. So we have to take ownership
of this project. And so he expanded, Yeah, well, and
we had been attacked twice. We had attacked in ninety three,
they tried to take the towers down, and the FBI
withheld information. I could I could spend a whole hour
on your show talking about the miss missteps that were

(34:54):
made and point directly to who's at fault. But again
that doesn't really serve any purpose.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
But it's a it's a reoccurring problem. It's a reoccur
If you want good information, you're going to get out
there and get it.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Your and you need to share the information right, which
is still compartmentalized to this day. And anyone that wants
to say differently is not really being.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Not living in the world that you are.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
It's it's not being honest. You know. Again, it sounds
good in theory, but it's not. And so there's always
this kind of fief them turf battles that go on.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
So after after nine to eleven. You have the Joint
Terrorism Task Forces. But NYPD did something that was exceptional.
And what did they do.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Well, they, first of all, they expanded it. That's that's
how I ended up going in there. I didn't even
really know much about the Intelligence Division, and they brought
in a guy named David Cohen, who was a thirty
six year CIA guy, and he said, this is how
we're gonna look at counter terrorism now. And some of
the things that he did and some of the programs
he brought about were very controversial, and it ended up

(35:51):
evolving around I think, well, the hands you look because
one of the things that we were doing that we
weren't doing is we were monitoring all kinds of events political,
fun events, small events, religious events. They had people in mosque,
they had people in cafes, and we were primarily looking
at people of Middle Eastern descent and is Muslims. And

(36:12):
people said, well, why would you do that. I'm like, well,
I don't know. If there's a robbery pattern, and we're
looking for Asian guys stealing toyota, you know, toyota camrys,
that's who we're looking for, right. So the primary defenders
were these people and if people wanted to dismiss that, well,
we don't profile. We profile every day otherwise if we
didn't profile, and profile is such a nasty word, but
it's really it's analytics. It's analytics that drive it verbage. Really,

(36:36):
it's it's really all it is. And so that's one
of the things that they did. One of the other
things they did was.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
So but let's go back a little bit, so we're
not depending. I mean, people want to complain like, oh,
I can't believe you put people here. I can't believe
you put people there. But that was you didn't just
like arbitrarily. NYPD didn't arbitrarily go you know, I think
it would be really good for us to monitor this.
They did that based on the analytics.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Correct, They did it based on analytics and population metrics
and things like that. I mean, again, we're talking about
a guy that took the NYPD to a whole different
realm and people were scared and and and rightfully. So
one of the things that was genius about the program.
They took an NYPD detective and a sergeant and they

(37:23):
placed him in every major city around the world, which
continues to this day. So if you can imagine London
or Paris, which were high threat cities and for many,
for many reasons, in many years, we have now an
NYPDA detective sitting right next to the actual intelligence officer
of that major city, and we're getting information in real

(37:43):
real time, not three days later in a cabley. And
by the way, beyond the lookout for people that are
videotaping in a subway station but not getting on the
train like So it was a different mindset like the
sped up for y'all totally, and it created a lot
of friction because the FBI was doing that. But they
really again as they say, they sucked at their job.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
But I think the other thing is I think when
you do that type of work, those agents that are
signed there, and I mean no disrespect, I think most
of the line agents that I've seen are like exceptional
human beings and are really really good at what they do.
The problem I see, though, is when you assign somebody
that doesn't live there and doesn't own the real estate
that they're on, it totally changes the way that they

(38:23):
do their job. And what I've seen in deployments overseas
is a lot of the government employees that are coming
over there are not doing it because they want to
get better at what they do. It is just a
step on a set of stairs to go to where
they ultimately want to end up. And they're not owning
the real estate.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
I couldn't agree with you more. I could not agree
with you.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
So you have this, So the volume of information that
you're getting from all these different entities, how did that work?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Well? So I had eight detectives assigning me. Okay, each
detective was required to have at least seven or eight
physical contacts with real human beings every day, every day.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
So we're not talking about random people. We're talking about, Hey,
this is an issue. This is the type of person
that would have access to the information that could possibly
prevent another terrorist attack. These are the people we need
to talk That's right.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
And so now if you can imagine eight detectives going
out and having eight to ten human contacts each day,
and you take that information and you whether it's a
license plate, phone number, address, and you start jamming that
into a computer which had basically like two hundred possible
terrorists in the United States to like now we have

(39:40):
over one thousand just in New York City organically so
and again now it's real human intelligence. The NYPD Intelligence Division.
Again I'm saying this, I'm happy to debate this with anybody.
Is the Google repository of human intelligence, all things counter
terrors of human intelligence, period And we now own this information.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Because the reason but the reason for that is is
that is a grassroots on the ground, not not depending
on unvetted information or anything else. That is like you
actually input and information and as it goes in, it's
vetted throughout. Ye, and it's not it's not, Hey, I
just got a tip from this person. I need to
go run over and do this. It It is a

(40:22):
like a I don't know the best way. It's almost
like a snowball. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger,
and it becomes clear and clear, and to me, it's
more it it the clarity at the end of it
is is phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Oh, it's it's amazing. And then you now you take
the actual law enforcement side of intelligence officers, and then
now you create a whole analytical section which didn't really
exist before. And now you have all these analysts that
are pouring over this information and that you do an RFI.
It could be anything like I want, I want to

(40:54):
I want to find I'm just I'm using this as
an example. I want to find a purple color Honda
Civic in Queens, and then narrow it down to not
just Queens, but in Hollist Queens. I'm just using that
as a gross sample. Right, you submit the r if
I you get it back. What is the RFI Request
for intelligence rest Requests for information? Yeah, okay, so now

(41:17):
you have all this at your fingertips. Now I'm horrible
at computers, right, I can write an email and I
know how to move around the mouse and things like that.
But if you told me, Chris, I want you to
be an analyst or work a financial crime, I would
say absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
That's can you let me interview the person once you
figure out Yeah, yeah, let me interview three or four people,
and I can get you some information.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
I'll type you up some notes and then you can
go from there. But if you want me to sit
down there and do that, I cannot do that.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
So on those day, and I know we're not going
in order, but like for me, my brain works this
way best. So taking the information that you had and
the intelligence model that you had from that, I want
to talk a little bit about what you did overseas,
But before we get there, what I want to do
is I want to talk about so when you when
you worked at with that knowledge that you have there,

(42:06):
I'm sure m IPD is doing even more things with
all the like the technical information and everything else they have.
So what in law enforcement now? Because I do have
strong opinions and you're in law enforcement still, which I
think is phenomenal that you know after I just think
one of the things that people is that is lost

(42:27):
on people is the desire to serve for people like
you that you know, you gave all this time, you
served your country with the Marine Corps, you served all
these different in all these different entities, and so like
for me, after you finished that, you still look at
something and go like, hey, there's a need. What can
I do to make this better? You know what I'm saying.

(42:48):
And I think I think I think that's lost on
some people is like they never kept I think there's
a lot of people that are in public service that
aren't public servants. And so for me, I want to
transition a little bit with the way law enforcement works now,
I still don't think we've learned that same lesson that
y'all have learned. Does that make sense? Like, I don't

(43:09):
when you talk about the process that y'all you used.
I think you have a lot of people that, like
some are collecting technical information, they're doing search ones for phones,
they're getting information, but there's really no machine to like like, hey,
let's go collect this information. Because that to me, what
we do in law enforcement, I think is we traditionally go, Okay,

(43:30):
I'm going to drive around on a police car if
I bump into somebody, because you know, you bump into
somebody and hopefully that information is going to turn out
And it all depends on who the person is that
takes the information. But if you have that person that
is directed out there and they're like, hey, I want
to collect this information, then they are probably when they're

(43:51):
out there looking for that information, that information that the
person may or may not have collected properly, that information
is probably going to pop at some point and it's
going to give you a direction. So in law enforcement,
what can we do now to make do a better
job of collecting information?

Speaker 2 (44:04):
So one of the things I did a lot of
training I did. I was a trainer pretty much for
ten years on and off. And one of the things
that people overlook now everything is your whole world is
in your cell phone, right But you know, so you
pay through your phone, you communicate through your phone. Obviously
you get directions from your phone. Back in the day.
One of the things that I learned again, somebody taught

(44:26):
me I didn't I didn't invent this. This uh this
criminal intel cycle and and uh encounter terrorism intelligence cycle
is a pocket litter and trunk chunk. So you would
be amazed if you went through somebody's wallet of what
you could find in there. But people would say they
look for the drugs, the obvious things. Drugs, okay, and

(44:49):
there's no drugs, so here's the while And if there
was money, and they and you had to account for
the money and separate the money because it was you
weren't vouchering the money. But you couldn't leave the cash
in the wild when you put the put the wile
with his personal property. Things like that. But things like
a phone number or a business card or information written
on the back of the business card, and people would

(45:11):
be like, well, what's the value of that. I'm like, well,
that's it. You don't know the value of it. I'm
not saying that I knew the value of this information,
but I was able to learn how to collect it.
So from the business card, I would put if they
had business cards or bank cards, I'd put them face up.
Then i'd flip them out, put them face now. Certainly
any kind of identification that they had, scrap pieces of paper,

(45:33):
I would look for the scrap piece of paper. Why
are you keeping a scrap piece of paper there? Well,
you don't want to say this is Joe's how to
build a bomb? One oh one, it's school you know
of a bomb making. So he's got a name down
there or just a phone number, and you collect that information.
And now all that information is being scanned into the
analyst section and you're like, oh, where is that guy?

(45:54):
Like now you get a phone call, like where is
this guy? Like I want to talk to this guy?
You know what I mean. And it's kind of sound simplistic,
but it's just basic things. One of the things that
I would teach on a tactical site exploitation is when
you flip this house, I don't care if it's a
state side house or it's in a war zone. You

(46:14):
want to think size wise sim card, because the sim
card is the key to the universe now, so it evolves.
But in the Arab world again, I'm flipping back and
forth in the Arab world again. I had to get
cultury school schooled up too on the on the Arabic
and Middle Eastern mindset. They are meticulous account account accounting keepers.

(46:38):
So they will still handwrite in ledgers things. Now I
don't read Arabic, I can't speak Arabic. I know a
few curse words and things like that, right, but that's
the keys, that's the key right there. And so when
we were doing these raids in Iraq, and I'm flipping
back and forth from trunk, junk and wild and pocket
litter to now like sim card and ledgers, you would

(46:59):
see they would itemize how they built the bomb, who
got paid to in place the bomb, who they kicked
up to everything.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
It's all in a ledger. You just have to you
just so that goes a transition. So you went into Iraq,
and that's what you did is hunt the ied makers.
That military realized, hey, we're getting slaughtered out here. Let's
bring in some people in and start exploiting some of
the information, and so that's what you're talking about. You're
talking about going out and just talking. So that is

(47:31):
so all that pocket litter, whatever you learned in New York,
that transferred straight over into back and so talk a
little bit about what your deployment to Bagdad look like.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
So they ended up looking at the problem. When I
say they the Joint Improvised Explosive to fight defeat the
Vice Organization jay Eido. So basically they decided, we need
to figure out how STY left the boom left of
the explosion right and and up until that point, what
was happening was the soldiers, unfortunately were getting killed by

(48:04):
ads and then they would be like follow on attacks.
It was a mess. There was a huge propaganda campaign
going on by the al Qaeda and franchise Al Cada Interaq,
and so they came up with this program and said,
why don't we attack this like a criminal organization. See
if we can find the bomb maker, see if we
can find the financiers and things, and trying eliminate this

(48:26):
whole issue. So that's actually what happened. So initially when
I got to Iraq, and I know we had this
conversation before the first iteration. The first six months. The
guy that was there was not good. He didn't have
communication skills. He couldn't sell this program, this concept because
up until then it was a concept.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
But you still But just so it's understood, is that
when you're assigned as a contractor, you still have to
attach to a regular army military and so your intel
person from your contract has to communicate with their intel
people or you're never going to leave the wire.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
That's correct. That's correct.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
And so your god didn't do a great job.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
The first guy, he did not do a great job.
Fast forward, we had this amazing individual named Matt Paccino.
My book is in memory of Matt Puccino. I wear
his memory bracelet. I talk about him often whenever I'm
interviewed about his STIG.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
To take about three or four minutes and just talk
about him and what he did for y'all and just
what a true American hero looks like.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Oh my god. First of all, he could have been
on the cover of GQ magazine. An incredibly handsome guy, Italian,
thick black wavy hair, bright blue eyes from Boston, Massachusetts,
big Italian family, super smart guy, great sense of humor,
was a special Forces operator. His MOS was an eighteen Fox,

(49:48):
so he wasn't a true intelligence officer. He spoke enough
Arabic to get by, but he was his greatest asset
was his personality and willing and being able to engage
people and win people over, like, hey, let me help.
I'm here to help. Let's help each other.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
No, I'm the smartest person, right, it's the very probably
one of the most like from what I've read in
your book, like, probably one of the most capable human
beings you've ever dealt with, but probably one of the
most humble.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Absolutely hundred percent. And he was able to win the
army over and build the trust with the relationship. So
if you can imagine doing an operation I had, I
did one hundred and ten operations, the majority of them,
probably eighty five percent of them with Matt as our

(50:37):
eighteen Fox guy.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
That says a lot, right there.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Ninety one at high value Captures, high value target casased
on tier one and tier two based on Matt.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
So, like, from my standpoint, when you look at that,
just what kind of force multiplier we're talking about. You're
you're not getting a bomb maker so that you're not
taking one person off the battlefield, you're taking the person
that is killed American soldiers in multiplying because they're not
building one bomb, they're building multiple bombs, so ninety one

(51:08):
high value targets. So like, I mean, when you look
at that as far as like the number of people
that he saved and what the work y'all did, that's
just phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Oh it's we went two months straight without an ID
event in our area of operation.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
And it was and how many did you have before
y'all got there?

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Daily? Daily, I would say daily, If not daily, every
other day. Sometimes there would be a respite and then
it would it would pick up again. But we're talking
about soldiers being just totally killed, and we're talking about
not just IDs. Everybody thinks, oh I d it's just
some homemade explosive device that just blows up. Now we're
talking about a ringing e of peace and the technology
that was being shipped in from Iran and the idea

(51:46):
behind this thing. I don't want to get too technical,
but basically what happens is there's an explosion and it's
in a cone device and it inverts itself, so you
could have the biggest, greatest level armor it's a penetrate.
It's it goes through one side and comes out the other.
And so there's the shockwave effect, there's the small effect,
and then there's just the whole lack of oxygen just

(52:10):
gets sucked right out right there. So basically some of
the people unfortunately you would look at them not to
be gruesome, but they would be completely intact. But it
was the shockwave that killed the just killed them on
the end side.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
So like from my standpoint, so this guy Matt comes
over there and get y'all operational and like y'are changing
the battlefield where I mean, just talk about that. What
did it feel like to be part of something like that?

Speaker 2 (52:40):
The adrenaline rush. And I'm sure you know from your
law enforcement career, like doing a search work, multiply that
times ten because you know that there's a bad guy
and this isn't some shop lifter at Walmart. This is
somebody that killed soldiers. So you have a really vested interest.
So it looks like we find the guy, we fixed
the location, we have a security cord on set up,

(53:03):
we have EOD personnel, we have bomb sniffing dogs, which
I know you have great familiarity with we have an
intelligence officer, we have a TEO technical exploitation officer who
can download software. We have bats and hides, we can
fingerprint these people and iris scan them on the battlefield.
And then you have my part, which is to take

(53:24):
them into the bathroom and talk to them and explain
to them it's in their best interest to tell me
who the next person is in this food chain. And
most of them a shock probably to people in your audience.
They didn't want to give information willingly. And then what
would happen would be Matt would be out there and
he knew what to look for in terms of things
that could either be used as a physical object or

(53:47):
a psychological motivator, and he would tap on the bathroom door.
And they knew not to tap on the bathroom door
unless it was something significant because they knew that was
going to break my momentum with this guy and engagement.
And they would hand me something. They would hand me
a cell phone, or they would hand me a SIM card,
or they would hand me a plug and play ID device,
and then I would just collapse this guy psychologically. And

(54:09):
sometimes this went on for over an hour and a
half to the point where the sweat was coming down
my back and filling up and puddling and pulling in
my It's brutal. It's brutal. But getting back to your
you know, the the level of adrenaline and motivation and
the level of satisfaction saying, yeah, I'm not solving the world,
but I got you.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
And you're every morning that you're going to chow, you're
you're looking across the table and you're like, that could
be somebody that wouldn't have been here if it wasn't
for the work we did. And I think that's that
to me is significant. Just like I don't so talk
a little bit any operations when you're in Iraq that
stand out. I I I think it's important to say,

(54:51):
you know, say his name again, say the name of
the Matt's name, and like the service that he provided.
Like I think it's so important for to like recognize,
like he acted as a force multiplier. Yes, because he
was eventually killed where in Afghanistan Afghanistan and so but
like his legacy are people that got to go home

(55:13):
to their families and that's your legacy too, uh. But
he never stopped serving, you know, he he was he
was and I think that's what's so cool about people
that we have on this show, is like that they
their service doesn't really end, you know, they're always they
always see the next next thing that they can make better.
So it's kind of a good segue into so you

(55:35):
you do that deployment, and I think, like what you
said is the operational tempo changed because it did Matt
rotate out.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Matt. Matt eventually rotated out and the team was never
the same. And then they brought in another guy and
he was a nice guy, but he was not mad.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
You get spoiled, don't you.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, because it's because it becomes an addiction.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
So you got that tempo and it's rolling and rolling,
and then you pull one piece out of it and
it just collapses.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
And you're doing you know, you're doing a burn, like
a twenty four hour burn, and you're like, yeah, I'm
physically expausted. I was forty eight years old at the time.
Well this is going on, but I was like I
was invigorated and I was enthusiastic. And then I had
a great interpreters who like could read my mind, and
so that there was like almost like no delay. It
was like almost it wasn't awkward.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
It's almost like ice skating, Like you were working as
a team and like you knew what they were doing,
you knew he knew how to And I think that's
one of the hardest things is when you're operating in
another environment they can't You can be really angry, but
if they don't deliver it really angry, you just waste
a lot of energy. And So talk a little bit
about what it was like, what made what finally got

(56:50):
you to the point of like I need to come
back home. And you know, as far as as far
as the deployments that you went to with the IDs,
did you what made you DECI like, hey, this is
this this is a good time for me to find
another way to serve.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
Well, the program was winding down, and like I said,
Matt had left, he went back to his SF unit
Special Forces Unit, and they had asked me the extend
and stay and I said, yeah, I'm here fifteen months.
I got to go home. And but what what kind
of prompted that was the fact that President Obama had

(57:27):
come into office and he changed the whole Status of
Forces agreement. So what we were able to do pre
Obama that had changed, and they wanted to actually try
and implement like a Western type of criminal justice system,
which was really laughable because we're in a war zone
and it's all back to this nation building crap, which
is all crap.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
It doesn't you can't. You can't build a nice down
of tribe.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
No. And so it was a combination of Matt leaving
and then in this and again I can't sit still,
like I don't want to be. Some people would be
content to sit around and collect a paycheck, you know,
and do nothing.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
A good paycheck, yeah, a very good paycheck.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
But not me. I want to I want to feel
like I'm doing something productive with my life. And this
was not productive.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
So you come back, you come back, and then at
some point during once you come back, you decided to
continue your service. What triggered that.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Well, I did some I did some training, and my
specialty was interviewing, interrogation, but I kind of blended it
with the tactical site of exploitation and evidence manipulation. But
when you Valley happened, I reached out to a friend
of mine and I basically said, what do I gotta
do to you know, get back in law enforcement? Because

(58:47):
I was disgusted by it. I saw the news, I
heard the stories. People are standing around there, kids are crying.
I'm like, I don't know who these people are, how
they sleep at night. But I knew that that was
like chilling to me. And I said to my friend,
what do I have to do? And he said, well,
you gonna have to go through the academy, a full

(59:09):
police academy, a full police academy. And how old were
you at that point? Sixty two?

Speaker 1 (59:15):
But you went through it. I did, and you graduated,
so you got like one of the top rewards for
physical fact.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
I got the uh at gold. Okay, so that's sixty
two years of age.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
That's awesome. Kind of goes with that in my brain
is is how do we take the knowledge that you
have and your ability to train people and use intelligence?
How do we do that? Maybe this is a question
that we can We probably talked for hours about. But
I think about these school shootings, they all have a

(59:47):
lot in common. How do we develop some kind of
intelligence program or something. I know people throw around mental health, guns,
all these different things. But I think if you start
studying the types of children and people to get into
these it's it's never a surprise to the people around them.

(01:00:08):
And so how do we how would we get intelligence
to address that?

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Well, I think first, first and foremost, like you were
saying earlier in the show, you got to recognize the
problem and admit that there's a problem, and there is
a problem. It is a mental health issue. But you know,
if you look at statistics, and again that's why you
have people that are e the our analysts that look
at these things, there is a trend and the trend
is unfortunately, it's been transgender people. It seems like the

(01:00:36):
majority of some of these horrific things, to include potentially
the shooting of the attempt assassination of President Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania,
there's some whisperings. They refuse to release some of the
other information about the Nashville shooting, all these other.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
You know, we're not really getting to motive.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
We're not And again, if we're going to be honest
about it, or the people that are doing the investigation,
they're certainly not sharing that information. So like in other words,
you could be a local law enforcement asset and want
to do the investigation and you could be blocked out
of it completely and to include any interviews that were taken,
and then so what are you left with. You're left
with somebody else's work product that's telling you what it is,
and the.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Point you in a direction that might not be the
correct that's correct because you haven't had a chance to
ask the information and figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Correct. I mean when you look at things like as
an example, which is the attempted assassination of President Trump,
this guy has two phones that have international connections, he's
flying a drone, he's on top of a building. There's
multiple sightings. We could talk about law enforcement failures and

(01:01:46):
things like that, but just from an intelligent standpoint, there's
so much information after that could have been disclosed and
has not been disclosed. So we don't know was he
working alone, did he have help, did he have financial support?
Were his parents aware of because there's been a complete
blackout of all of that, and why there's a complete
blackout of that, I don't know. I don't know. But

(01:02:08):
that same thing happened with the Las Vegas shooting. There's
a complete blackout of information about that, like nothing to
see here. He had two caseloads of guns that people
actually helped him load onto somehow got all the way
up to what floor was he like thirty some odd
floor and its over fifteen hundred feet away. Still the
biggest mass shooting in history today, but nobody knew anything

(01:02:29):
about this guy. I mean again, you have to suspend disbelief.
I mean, I'm from the world of like, you got
to prove You've got to prove this out. You've got
to look at all the information. But there's no information
out there, not at least on open source information about
what really happened in these And I'm just talking about too,
one with the president and one with you know, forty

(01:02:50):
some odd people that are killed out at an outdoor concert, Like,
how is that possible?

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah? No, I agree. Yeah, I'd like say that I
could do this all day because I think I think
your insights are extremely valuable, because I think I think
we have access to so much unvetted information, and I
think people just want to like grab what they the
first thing they see and run as far as they
can with it. And like, I think it's really cool that,

(01:03:17):
like you've vetted information and you've arrived at a destination
that actually did something really really great, not just your
time at NYPD, but also like taking that information and
utilize it in in a country we were, you know,
at war. We weren't really at war with them, I
would say. I would say, we had a war to
clear it out. You can go into the dynamics and

(01:03:40):
how that all worked. Talk a little bit about your book.
You wrote a book, and like I said, we've got
a copy of it here, and I do appreciate that too.
Like like I said, I read it on nook, but
like it is always, I will definitely go in the library.
Talk about your book a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Well, the book was is in memory. Like I said before,
my friend Matt, the book took me ten years to
actually get it physically published. So I came home and
I was frustrated, and I was telling the story just
like I'm telling you the story, And depending on who
the person was that I was talking to, especially if
they were a military person, it's very relatable. But there's

(01:04:18):
aspects of the of the law enforcement side that are
very relatable too. So there's two things. But the main
reason why I wrote it is because of the frustration
I had and the unnecessary death that was going on
over there. And one of the things that really frustrated me,
and I know we spoke before before I came out
here today. Is the amount of money that was being

(01:04:41):
confiscated at these places where people were either the bomb
maker or the financier or the logistics person or the
in place or whoever they were in this food chain
was staggering. And it was one hundred dollars bills in
serial number to order brand new uncirculated. And so the
question becomes then, obviously, well who gave them the money?

(01:05:01):
Was it an intelligence source that gave him the money?
Was it a Special Forces community, was it what they
call SERP money commanders Emergency Response program money? Was it
the CIA? Or I can't even tell you how many
people said I'm working for the CIA, or I'm working
for this group or that entity. And again I can't
prove or this prove that. But if I call them

(01:05:23):
and ask you, you know that that point of contact, Hey,
are you guys working with so and so the source?
And they deny it, Well that's where it ends. I
can't call the guy. I don't know if it's true
or not.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
You just know that you can't track the money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
But the money became the reoccurring theme with these raids.
So that makes people uncomfortable because now they want to know.
And again, going back to the book and the experience,
why is it that a bunch of ragtag forty year
old men are out here finding this money, finding high
value targets? And when we have this whole intelligence operation

(01:06:00):
apparas with CIA, DEA ATF and to include a special
forces community, why is it that they're rounding up more
high value targets than us? And we've been in country
for two years, three years.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Four years because they're doing a tour, That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
So that was the impetus. That's why I wanted to
write the book because I wanted people to know about Matt,
but I also wanted to know that there were a
lot of amazing people that were doing a lot of
amazing things. As you pointed out, did save a lot
of lives. It's no way to quantify how many lives
they save. But as they say, we went two months
not a single idea, and the small arms fire was
pretty much done and over it. I got there in

(01:06:40):
February of two thousand and eight. So that was not
the primary killer of the soldier over there. It was
the IDs and in particular the EFPs from Iran.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
Well, I appreciate you coming on and I appreciate like
the number of families and service members that you kept
safe and kept them unharmed, and appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
I appreciate your time very much.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Toute day. Thank you, Sir Chaing