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