Former Secret Service Agent: How Presidents Are Protected | Evy Poumpouras | FO563 Raj Shamani

26:52Yes. I mean, I did that all the time when I was an examiner. Well, there are some influence strategies you can use with people. So for example, autonomy is one that's a good influence strategy. What do you mean, Veda? So autonomy is when I let you feel like you're in control, for example, is, all right, I'm trying to think of a simple one. So for the interview, when I was doing my old job in law enforcement, even now in media, people sometimes don't want to talk to you. But a lot of people did not want to talk to me because if you talk to me, there was a very good chance you might go to jail or prison.

27:32So what's the benefit of talking to me? But the way the law works in the United States, you cannot make somebody talk to you, even if they're in custody, even if they're arrested, they have the right to remain silent. They have Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent. You don't have to share an information. You know that if you share information, it can be held against you. So one of the things I would do to make people feel like they have control and authority, I would tell them you can leave at any time. You have a choice. There's the door. I would show them the door. I would even say, look, the door's unlocked.

28:08You can walk out. I would make sure that my chair, when I could, did not block the door, that they always felt that they were free to go if they were not in custody or if they were free to stop speaking to me. So I gave them a choice. It's like, hey, just come and sit down. You don't have to say anything. Let me do the talking. And at any point, if you want to walk out, you can walk out. I just gave you a choice. So you don't feel like I'm holding all the cards. But if I'm like, no, sit down and you're going to talk to me and you're going to tell me this. If you don't tell me this you're going to jail i'm taking away your autonomy so when people feel the choice like i can walk out anytime and she won't stop me that's autonomy you feel better you feel like i can i'm in charge that's that's a really good influence strategy other influence strategies are reciprocity i do something for you and helps that either later on or immediately you'll do something for me.

29:00People don't like to feel, for some reason, we're wired, most of us, not to feel like we owe somebody something. So think about doors. Like when people hold doors, you ever walk through double doors where it's doors and then another set of doors, which some office buildings are like that. So if somebody holds a door for you and you walk through, you're like, oh, thank you. And what do you immediately do? You grab the next door to hold for them, to do it for them. That's called reciprocity. So when you do things for people, you should do them for the the niceness of doing things for people however there are some people use it as an influence strategy i'll do something nice for you in hopes that you will reciprocate and do something nice for me that's influence especially let's say i'm gonna do something nice for you raj because maybe i want to get into the podcast business and i don't know anything about the podcast business but you're really good at it so i'm going to do a lot of nice things that have nothing to do with podcasts for you that way later on i can come to you a month or two months later, hey, Raj, I got a question for you.

29:59I want to launch a podcast. Could you guide me or help me out? And you're going to say, sure, Evie, because I did a lot of things for you before, nothing to do with the podcast space, but I put like money in the bank of Raj. And now I can come to Raj and I'm going to withdraw. And you're thinking, oh, she's done so many nice things for me. Now you should do nice things for people, I think, within reason, because we should all help each other out. I'm not self-made. I had good people along the way that helped make me and get me to where I'm at. But it's also, you know, you can also look at people and say, this person, maybe later on in life can give me guidance or support.

30:40Let me give value to them. So it's like a tricky slope, you know, but then there are people who completely manipulate it. But that's another influence strategy, reciprocity. And I'll give you one more, authority. If people see me as an authority, they are more likely to say yes to me and not challenge me. So if you're able to carry yourself in such a way or make somebody believe that you are the authority in that dynamic, that's influence. How do you make yourself an authority in the room? It can be the way I enter the room. It can be the way I speak and the way I dress. It can be the R I put off.

31:20It could also be my voice. There was a study done 2012 in the United States. They looked at politicians and they wanted to see which politicians would win the election. They were trying to see patterns. And they found that those politicians who won the majority of the elections, they all had a deeper, stronger tone voice. It's called paralinguistics. Because of the way they sounded when they spoke, they were deemed to have more authority, nothing to do with their competency or anything like that, just what they sound like when they spoke it, they spoke. So if I have a higher voice, I'm seen as less competent and less of an authority.

31:55Hi, I'm Evie. Hi, I'm Evie. This is who I am. I'm deemed as being more of an authority. So there's other little, there's other techniques and strategies that you use to make yourself appear or not appear as an authority, regardless of title or status. So one strategy to appear authoritative was voice. it can be your voice yes two three more can be dress okay so darker colors which you're wearing now um exude more authority like if i came in here wearing a bright yellow outfit and i'm former u.s secret service even if i'm highly competent um just the appearance of what i'm wearing is going to take my authority away some people are going to doubt The people are going to doubt it.

32:44And I understand why. Here's the thing. First impressions, they matter. It's like one second to 0.5 seconds, 0.1 seconds to like two or three seconds. It's like super fast. Once somebody, Raj, has a negative impression of you, it's extremely difficult to reverse. So how you show up, how you enter a room, what you wear, how you're dressed, your movements, all of that. People within seconds decide how they see you. And if they make a negative impression of you, it is deeply difficult to undo. And it takes a lot of patience and a lot of time and a lot of work on your end, consistency to change that.

33:25That's why it's really important. Always think about how you show up immediately. And with that, social media comes in because it's not just me showing up here. You've probably looked at my social media. You've looked at my posts. You look at what I write. That's another thing people have to look at because people are already making an impression of you before they even met you. Let's get into details of security now because when the whole world is lying, you can't trust anyone. Everyone, you see them as a threat because there can be possible threat from anywhere in the world, right? And you are responsible to be in a group to protect the most powerful person in the world, where probably the enemy line is like the whole world is your enemy.

34:10How do you design this? Like what is the layers? Because all we see is one guy in the center was the president of the United States. And then we see a couple of bodyguards around them. How many layers does it go out as well? So it's a lot of security layers, kind of like how you were saying you created layers around you for people who want access to you. It's the same thing. So you have to think of layers of, first of all, there's layers from the security side and the people in the closest, in the center of the circle, they call that shift. shift is like you're literally the bodyguard so this is like it's the last line of defense if something gets to the shift if i'm standing next to the president and a shot's fired and it hits us or hits him i've i failed okay it should never come to that um but you have components that create think of like circles of security around that person layer upon layer and the idea is each of these circles are supposed to stop or intercept a threat at some point so what are some examples that I can share.

35:12So for example, something counter sniper. So if I, one of the worries you have is let's say right now we're in New York city, high rise buildings. If the president's moving, arriving and departing somewhere, I'm not just securing the ground. I'm securing what's up top. I've got all these high rise buildings. So anybody, a sniper can embed themselves anywhere and take a shot. So that's one layer of security I have to manage. So you would put counter snipers. Those are tactical teams that are obviously on the side of the Secret Service or local law enforcement who are supposed to take positions to look at literally every open window.

35:49And they would be like on the radio. Hey, I see an open window. So just imagine how crazy that is when you're moving the president or someone like of that nature where you're walking around and you're literally like hearing, hey, open window on 13 at this building or open window here. and then there would be a team that would go to each open window, go to that. I remember once President Bush, I can share this story, went to Argentina and I was assigned to be the counter sniper response. So the counter snipers are looking at all the open windows and the ceilings in the area and it was me and another person who are assigned to respond because they can't move and they don't want to shoot.

36:29If you have to see a threat, to shoot you have to see a threat. So I was part of the team that would respond to all these open windows. And so I remember there was one that came in a threat. And now we're in a foreign country, mind you, Argentina, where we go and there was a potential person on a rooftop and the counter sniper, all he could see was a lens. So he couldn't tell if it was a lens from a weapon or it could have been binoculars. There's no way to know. But he could see the light from the lens or the reflection. So we're running to respond to this. Go all the flights up, you know, and you don't know.

37:05And you're hearing, hey, they're moving closer. And you're hearing all this traffic. And you're thinking, oh, gosh, the president, and it was President Bush at the time, is moving. And you get there. And it was this older man who had binoculars who was trying to watch. But, I mean, we scared him half to death. you know he was like oh my god i'm sorry you know lo siento lo siento um but that those are layers of protection so that's one layer so you're getting the counter snipers you're doing you have something and i think i can share this to some degree there's teams on the ground that are dressed like everybody else and they're just in the crowd and they're blending in the crowd and usually those people you put them where the crowd is you put them where protesters are because i want to listen to what the protesters are talking about because anywhere the president goes, you're going to have protesters, period, the end.

37:53There's always going to be hate. And so they, at least in the US, you have to allow them, it's their First Amendment right to speak, but you want to put them in a place where they can feel heard, but where it's safe. So we position them somewhere. So you want to make sure you've got teams there. You've got the vehicles, which are highly tactical vehicles, ballistic vehicles. So that's another thing. and some people don't know this, the most vulnerable a protectee is, is in movement, arrival, departure. When they're in a physical location like we are, I can control components. Outside is like where you're the weakest.

38:32Also like when the cars are moving because another thing that was a concern were ambushes. I'm driving and somebody puts an IED on the road, boom, right? What do I do? So you always want to stay in motion. You never, they used to say, get off the X. You never want to be locked into a problem. And I actually even use the get off the X psychologically. Whenever I'm dealing with a problem and I feel stuck, I'm like, I'm on the X. I'm on the X. Get off the X. But this was a tactical thing that would be done. The other thing you would also do is you may not realize it, but it's not just the Secret Service.

39:05Secret Service is a small agency relative to other agencies. So you would go to local police departments. So right now we're in New York City. So I would go to the NYPD and I would say, I need uniforms. I need officers. and they would scatter them throughout the city. And one of the things you would decide too is how many officers do you want in plain clothes that blend? And then how many do you want in uniform? So you would want both. Some people would be like, oh, I don't want any in uniform. I would want them all plain clothes so the public doesn't know. Wrong. I want officers in uniform. Why?

39:36Because if I'm a bad actor and I see uniform, what am I going to do? I'm going to turn around and go the other way. It's just sometimes just the presence of seeing that uniform there that deters. They do it. Police do it. I don't know if they do it in India, but here in the United States, they will park police vehicles in certain locations. No police in them, but they'll park them in certain locations where they think people speed. And so people see the police car and they automatically slow down, even though there's nobody in the car. I didn't know this. Yes. Visually seeing law enforcement is a deterrence.

40:09So a lot of it is visual. Most people will see and they'll turn around. Then you want to think of like barricades, physical things you can do to secure a spot. I think I can share this one too. Like I'm always very like thinking about what I can and cannot share because I never want to impede the ability of the service to do their job. But I had one assignment where the president and this one was President Barack Obama. He was going to speak in an open, open area. And near that open area, there was a highway. and my concern was somebody driving by that it was like a service road highway but my concern was somebody driving by and detonating of their vehicle and that blast hitting the stage or the area where the president was the other thing is too we keep talking about securing the president i'm also responsible for those 10 000 people that are going to be there because you what you don't realize is he's the threat, right?

41:10He's the volatile thing. He's the thing people want, but people that are around that now are vulnerable. So I have to think, I have to keep those people safe. It's not just this person and forget everybody else. So I remember I was trying to think, how do I secure this roadway? So I had line of sight issues, which means people from the road could see through. There were trees and a forest, but they could still see through. So line of sight, I don't want people seeing in that are not in my secure space because I'm thinking weapons, snipers. The other thing I'm thinking is vehicles that could detonate.

41:41So I was like, all right, how do I block this? So I start making phone calls to the locals in the area, meaning the city. And at first I called sanitation, the people that do the garbage, because here in the United States, we've got heavy, big, thick garbage trucks. I was like, I need garbage trucks. So I call and because this was a small area, they're like, we don't have enough garbage trucks for you. And so I'm thinking, well, I need trucks. And then I called like construction places. I was like, I can put bulldozers. I didn't have enough. So I was like, I know what I'm going to do. I called schools.

42:10I called, I think it was the superintendent for the schools in that area. I said, do you have some yellow school buses I can borrow? They said, yes, we do. And I said, how many school buses can you give me? So the district gave me all their yellow school buses and I lined them up by the highway and by the tree line. So they did what? They blocked my line of sight. That's one. Two, they would deterrent for a blast. So if a blast came from the road, those school buses would absorb the impact of the blast. Now, if I had a second blast, it might be a bit of an issue, right? Because you want to be able, because you also have to do the math on how much of an explosive and how far can that explosive reach?

42:52You have to do blocks. There's so many things that come into effect. So I remember I lined the whole thing with yellow school buses. I just got them all. I had them lined up. I said, drop them off. I'll call you when I'm done. When we were done, I called them up. I said, come pick up your school buses. So when you do protection, you have to be very creative. You don't think like a protector. You think like the assassin. If I'm going to kill this person, how am I going to do it? And I think of all the ways I would kill the person. And then I work in reverse and I build my plan. The other thing is something very simple too, road closures, closing roads, because I want to control what's in.

43:33You create clean space, which is space that's been cleaned, that's secure. And then you lock it secure, and then you keep everything dirty outside of it. So then you have magnetometers. If people are coming to an event, which is always a variable you want to try to control or not control so there's so many layers you you would do another thing we would do and i think this is okay like for big events like let's say the president's going to speak at a stadium with people um my concern would be not just explosives but chemical biological weapons radiation so we would have devices there that would assess whether there was any radioactivity nuclear threats that type of stuff radioactive devices you have to think constantly because the people that want to do this that want to cause harm and you know what and it's funny they probably don't think they're causing harm they think they're doing something good in the world usually people that do this stuff think i'm i'm the good guy and it's a you know yeah they they they justify what they're doing but you put all these mechanisms and layers in place to create a protective environment.

44:45So I'm knocking one after another, after another, each threat. The other thing to think about, you probably wouldn't think about it, is fire. So it's fire, not just for my person, but what about the people? How am I going to get them all out of there? How am I going to save all those thousands of people if there's an explosion? So I would have to have medical teams on standby, not just for the person I'm protecting, but also for the crowd. So there's so many things you have to think of and layers that you put into place to offset. And you have to think at the end of the day, I'm there to preserve human life.

45:20How do I do it? But how do you do that on a foreign land? You work with foreign countries. Like imagine a US president has to go give a speech in China or India or China. I've been to Russia, not with the president because we have other people we protect. and it's a gamble because you have to trust that other foreign country. So with Russia, I went to put the security plan in place for the Secretary of the Treasury to go because we protected also the Secretary of the Treasury. So I go, I put my nice plan in place. I'm working with the State Department. The Russians are going to do this. And then we show up, we roll up to the gates.

46:04Hi, I'm here with the Secretary of the Treasury. Now I'm the agent in charge of the whole thing, right? And yes, come on in as the gates open. My person goes in and the Russians close the gates on the rest of the team and they lock us out. And I am, I am, I don't want to say I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my mind on the inside because outside I'm keeping it together. And, you know, those are examples of where foreign countries will mess with you. And they were absolutely messing with us. And it was really a terrible scenario to be put in because the tactical element, which was our element was locked out and there was only a small contingency of protection with the person with the secretary of treasury it was horrific and then the russians to mess with us further when it was time to be i couldn't get in by the way i literally was at the gates fighting with the russians i couldn't get in and i'm arguing with the state department too because at the time i'm like where's your muscle like how could you allow something like this to happen And when they were done with the meeting, so they never let me in, they actually had my protectee leave through a different gate.

47:10And then they gave them Russian security and left us somewhere else. It was horrific. So that stuff absolutely does happen. It is going overseas, especially with countries that either want to mess with you or are not friendly. You are at sometimes the mercy of that stuff. So you always want to be really careful. There were times where I would do protection plans in certain countries. And even though they were friendly, they were really difficult to deal with. And I would make calls and say, you can't bring this person here. But how the process goes? Let's say if one, now you're the person you're trying to protect, that person has to land in another country.

47:50You go there in advance. How many days? So let's say he's going to, the president's going to India, right? Yeah. If I'm going to India, which is a big country, let's say he's going to Mumbai, I'm going to send an agent and people out there probably a month in advance to work with the Mumbai police, with the federal police in India, with the military in India, whatever India is willing to give me, I'm going to work with them. Now, typically with India, there's high trust, right? Certain countries, there's more trust than with other countries. And I'm going to work with those locals. At the same time, though, it's funny because you're doing the protection.

48:24At the same time, you always have to worry about espionage too with other countries. You want to disclose some of your security plan, but you can't disclose all of it because now a foreign country knows how you do protection. It's such a weird dance. So you want to show and give, but at the same time, you don't want to show and give everything because every country sends their version of the CIA to watch and listen and be like, oh, this is how the Americans do it. And sometimes they just want to copy what we do because we do it well. And sometimes they want to know because they're spying and they're collecting intelligence.

48:59The country you go to matters. Who you work with matters. And also, the United States does typically a really good job of letting you know, hey, you're going to this country. They play nice or they don't play nice. These are the things to be aware of. Or, hey, this country has a police force that's going to work with you. But there's a lot of corruption with this police force. So be very, very careful. There's high corruption in this police force. Watch what you share. presume that they're selling this information to somebody else. So it becomes very difficult. Foreign trips are typically massive, massive headaches.

49:34And then sometimes you'd go to countries that just want to mess with you because you're America. And sometimes people have negative feelings towards America. But don't you think countries like India or any large country all around the world, they would want to help you more? They would provide their best security, best stuff to protect your president. Because if anything happens in that trip, it's a bad reputation for the country. It's a bad spot on the country, right? You're correct. No other country would want to mess because you don't want to mess with, forget messing. You don't want to mess with even a small country.

50:08You don't want to show the world that a president of another country came to your country and this is what happened. Well, it depends on the country. If you go to Iran, it's a country. You don't want to go there anywhere Or Afghanistan, when we are at war, they would actually sneak the president in because you can't trust. Sometimes some governments, because there's so much, there's high corruption or sometimes infighting. Sometimes you can't even trust governments because they themselves don't have a good handle on the country. So keep that in mind. Not every country is India where there's some level of law and order and organization.

50:44Some countries are not, they don't have that. There's a lot of infighting. There's civil unrest. There's problems where people don't recognize who's in charge. So keep that in mind. So what country am I going to? Is there a stable government? Is that a government I can work with? Is that government friendly and sometimes even friendly? So you said, why would a maybe stable government or friendly not cooperate? I remember one country. I'm not going to say which one. It was Africa. I was in Africa. and this one country where one of my protectees was going to go, I was sent there a month out in advance to put a protection plan or security plan.

51:21And now typically we want to bring from the U.S. weapons and cars. I want my stuff. I don't want your stuff. I don't know how good your stuff is. I want my stuff. But this country was giving me a very hard time saying you can only bring in, instead of I'm going to make the numbers up, You can only bring in 10 guns, not 50 guns. Right. And I'm like, well, I want 50 guns. What am I going to do with 10 guns? So there's an argument there. And sometimes it would just be like, well, have our people. And I don't want your people. I want my people. So that's where the issue would come in. Because in the US, United States, we train very differently.

51:59So there's some countries where you're like, nice country, but they're not capable of protecting. Or some countries will be like, well, we'll give you ballistic vehicles. No. Actually, if you look at images of the president, any president going anywhere in the world, they are always in their cars. You never, ever, ever use that host country's cars. Look at any picture of any president of the United States. They are always in their cars. We fly the cars over. Why? Because I know my cars are good. Well, not my cars, the U.S. Secret Service's cars. I know my cars are good. I know they can withstand a certain amount of bullets, a certain blast.

52:37I don't know what your cars are like, what they're designed. Forget about even maybe there are bugs in there, meaning spy bugs to listening. Forget that. I know what my cars are capable of. Even magnetometers, the magnetometers people walk through in certain scenarios and events. I don't want your magnetometers. I want mine. I know what mine are capable of doing. I don't know what yours are capable of doing. And that's where trust comes in. You trust, but only so far, conditional trust. I trust my stuff works and works well. You're not so sure and it's not a risk I'm willing to take. So sometimes people's feelings would get hurt in different countries.

53:14But when you're dealing with life and death and you're dealing with the most targeted person in the world, it's like you can't negotiate certain things. But is it like full-time negotiation going on between two countries? Like when you want your person to visit there? Yes. You're always negotiating. You have to do a good job because the other thing is you could really ruin diplomatic relations. Why? How? Because if I'm not getting along with the government of that country, I get sent to India. And let's say India is giving me a hard time, right? But the president of the United States is going to India to speak with the heads of state to encourage trade or do something.

53:55And let's say the relationship is a little rocky. If I come in and I create problems, it always goes to the top. And so now I'm creating a hostile environment. I have to work well and work nice. You're a diplomat. I had a diplomatic passport. You're a diplomat. You represent your country. So one, your behavior. Are you behaving yourself when you're in that country? You can't act stupid. Number one. Number two is your professionalism. And what you do or say, you're representative of the US government. And you have to think about every time you open your mouth, am I representing this government well?

54:29Because the phone's going to ring. and they're going to say, what are you doing? We're going there to make nice and you're creating a hostile environment. Although I'm going to say this, the United States overall, at least in my experience, we were always, when we would do it, always very respectful and very good. And we were told you play nice when you go overseas. It was usually the other way around. I know everybody thinks America's the aggressor, but I will tell you from my experience, we usually went in very much in good faith. And it was usually, sometimes maybe because of the reputation the US has, some countries would be very difficult to deal with.

55:06Some were just happy to have you and they're like, we'll give you whatever you need. So it just ran the gamut. But why? I'm still not able to understand why they would not allow you 50 guns and only allow you 10 guns. Is there a reason? Or it's just a tactic that, hey, we don't succumb to every demand that you have? So it's a really good question. Here's why. So I'm going to flip it. Let's say a country is going to come to the US and they're like, hey, we want to come to the US and we want to bring 50 of our personnel and they're going to bring 50 guns. The United States looks at this and says, your guys are coming in with guns.

55:43I don't know what their training is. I don't know how with their tactical training, the laws here are different. Do I want that many guns in my country from a foreign country with foreign people? So they do the same. Now you can make the argument, I'm going to be American here. We're the United States. We have really good training. You can trust us when we go to another country. But then when that country comes to the U.S. and we're like, hey, I know you let us in with all these guns, but we're not going to let you in. So there's always like this barter system. Okay, if you let me in with 50 guns, I'll let you in with 40 guns.

56:15So a lot of times it's that. It's just a power play. Yes. What I can hear. Of course, yes. Now let's come to the cars. You were telling me about the car because you kept bringing again and again. It's very difficult to drive a ballistic vehicle. What is it? What's the difference between a normal car and the car for the most protected person in the world? Basically, what's the difference between a ballistic vehicle and a regular vehicle? Ballistic vehicles usually have layers that are put in them so that if there's gun, like uh bullets hitting them that they were able to withstand the bullets ballistic glass glass that could withstand bullets so they're essentially bulletproof tires right because maybe i don't shoot the car but i shoot the tires so you want to make sure tires have kevlar or something kevlar is like what bulletproof vests are actually made of it's fabric people think ballistic vests are made out of steel or metal or something they're actually made out of fabric Okay.

57:14And that fabric, when you put it layer upon layer, it's very strong. But in Kevlar, though, here's what's interesting. Kevlar, it can stop bullets. It can't stop a knife. So you can actually shoot someone. It'll stop it. But if somebody goes to put a knife with certain ballistic vests, the knife will go through. Yeah. So there's different types of bulletproof vests. So there's different things. So with the vehicles, they basically line them in such a way they'll get the cars in the United States. It's usually you'll see it's Suburbans or Cadillacs, American cars to get the vehicles. And then the U.S.

57:51Secret Service has their own team that will take the vehicles and put. do things to the vehicles, shield the vehicle in such a way where it can withstand firepower, where it could withstand explosives, or any other type of attack. That's how it's designed. And there's numerous cars. Now, when you do this, though, the car becomes heavy. And so now you have to make sure, too, that the suspension of the car can hold all that weight. That's a whole other thing. Yeah. because the chassis and suspensions of a car are designed to hold 3 ,000 tons or 4 ,000, excuse me, pounds or 4 ,000 pounds, whatever it's designed to hold.

58:35When you add ballistic on top of it, the car gets heavier. So now you may even have to change the framework of the car. So the car may sit lower. There's all these tactical things that go into place. So you have to drive them a certain way. You have to be careful when you drive them. and again because of the weight when you speed with those cars when you hit the brake it slows down a lot slower it's harder to slow down it's kind of like driving a big truck you know when you see a small car versus a big truck driving if they're both going the same speed the small car will stop faster the bigger truck because it's carrying all that cargo it's it's more dangerous it's going to slop slower and then if it stops abruptly the cargo can like literally break the metals and like come through so you the the ballistic vehicles like that so when you drive those cars there's special training they teach you to drive those cars is it slower the car because of all this weight the car can only go up to like 60 miles per hour it's not slower it's just you have to drive it differently and i can't say how fast it goes or not goes yeah but then just to just a science the physics doesn't add up right like it has to be slower because it's they make modifications to the car all sorts of modifications so that it can catch up to a certain speed yeah so they modify not just the exterior of the car everything so many things within the car itself another thing you used to do for and So the government was interrogation, right?

1:00:12How to interrogate in a nice way. So you have to be highly ethical when you do that stuff. You have to be highly ethical. So even with the polygraph, which is really polygraphs like a laptop, like that thing, it's a software system. And then you could, you connect components to people. Now the polygraphs great. But if I'm not ethical, I can, I can get you to fail it. Oh. yes I can get you to fail it um so you have to be very ethical and I I I because I was always um I understood the gravity of what we were doing and I never wanted to have like somebody else's life on my hands like I didn't want to be responsible for somebody spending the rest of their life in prison I'm like no thank you I don't I need to sleep at night it's not just for them but for myself um but you you i i would always be very careful like there's a whole mathematical computation and how you do it but i would always air i would give people more often the benefit of the doubt and it would be so so that if you failed my polygraph you deserve to fail it where often i would get people inconclusive which means they didn't pass didn't fail and i'd spend a lot more time.

1:01:25But you might have some people go, nope, they failed clearly. And now the polygraph itself, if you fill a polygraph, it's not admissible in court. The court doesn't care. At least here in the US, they don't care. But what they care about is what a person says. But where the polygraph would help is sometimes you would have people, Raj, who are very good liars, very good liars. And they would be like, nope, swear to God, never did this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there were times where even me, I'm like, man, I think I really want to believe this person. I really like them. I believe this guy. I want to believe in him.

1:01:59And I'm like, all right, you know, let's just do the polygraph will be great. And I'm thinking, yeah, they're going to pass it. I hook them up and they fail that thing. And I'm like, and I remember one of the senior polygraph examiners, interviewers, interrogators, interrogators said to me, always trust your charts. Your charts is the data that you collect. the it collects electrodermal activity how much you sweat it collects the blood pressure flow of blood in the body it collects a heart rate it collects all sorts of stuff so that data lets you know what's happening internally with that person and if you feel threatened it's your autonomic nervous system it changes so when you feel any kind of threat your autonomic nervous system peaks to protect you let's say like you're walking crossing the street a car goes to hit you you do yeah right you you feel this influx of of adrenaline everything changes because your body is arming you to prepare you to fight flight or either get hit by the car when you lie it's the same thing you fear getting caught in a lie i want you to think about time you lied raj and you're like man i hope i don't get caught or you got caught and think about the threat that you felt because getting caught in a lie It can hurt your reputation.

1:03:17It can hurt your business. It can hurt your integrity. It can hurt that relationship with that person. So getting caught in a lie causes a physical reaction. So the way the polygraph would work is you get asked a series of questions. And the polygraph looks at how your autonomic nervous system, things you can't control. Like you can't control how much you sweat. You can't control your heart rate. You can't control your blood flow. You can't control these things. how they react to certain questions. Now you might say to me, yeah, but every, I'm taking a polygraph, I'm nervous. I'm going to be freaked out during this whole thing, right?

1:03:52You're freaked out during the whole thing. So that means every question I ask you, you're freaked out. So your norm or your baseline is freaked out all the time. But I'm looking for when I get to that one question, you extra freak out. and I'm like, wait a minute. I know he's freaked out the whole way here, but why when I asked this one question about, let's say it's a hiring polygraph, Raj, have you ever done drugs? I ask him this question all the way to the top. We got an extra freak out here. Why? That lets me know Raj has a problem with this question. Now, maybe the problem is Raj did a lot of drugs, or maybe the problem is Raj didn't do a lot of drugs.

1:04:36Maybe Raj's parent did a lot of drugs or he has a friend who did a lot of drugs or sold drugs. And when he hears this question, it causes him to react. My job as a good examiner is to sit down and be like, Raj, talk to me. Talk to me about this question. And now I need to figure out what it is. That's how it works. But you don't control these things. So even how much you sweat, when you feel threatened, you sweat more. Do you know why we sweat more when we feel threatened? No. Because your body is creating sweat so that when it thinks it's being attacked, so it's helping you prepare to fight. Well, when you grab a sweaty person, can you hold on to them?

1:05:16It slips. It slips. Your body's smart. Your body's smart. So your body's getting prepared. So when they grab you, they can't hold on to you. It's evolutionary. The body's amazing. That's why sometimes people are like, oh, I have anxiety. I have panics. I'm like, that's good stuff to have. Don't make it all go away because your body's protecting you. Being anxious or worrying, those are good. One, they're good qualities to have as a human being because it means you care. Because people who don't care don't have those reactions. And two, your body's arming you to protect you from whatever's happening to you in that moment.

1:05:51But can you catch someone, like can you catch a lie without the polygraph test, without something? Yes. Can, if you and I are talking, can you spot out, like if I'm lying or no? Yes. If I want to, yes. Okay. How do catch a lie? It depends on the person. So let's just use your example. You have a baseline, right? Of how you are. So you're, for example, like I'll give you an example. When you speak, your tone is always the same. Yeah. You have a soft tone. You have a certain tone. But if I start talking to you, let's say, ask you a question about something maybe with your family. And it's a very sensitive issue.

1:06:27if I hear a shift in your tone, I'm going to be like, oh, Raj has always been talking this way the whole time. Why the shift in tone? Why did he just peak or why did his voice just crack? Or this whole conversation, Raj is answering questions. And the minute I asked him about his parents, he did this before he answered. He never did it before. All I do in that moment is I ask myself, why did he just do that? So the key here is when you do that, then I have to pay attention that you did that. And I have to now ask you more questions about your parents. And maybe there's nothing, maybe there's something.

1:07:06Most people let that stuff go, go. And that's the problem. So here's the thing. If I'm interviewing the whole time and the whole time we're talking, you're doing, then I'm like, that's what Raj does. He's got something in his throat. He needs water. That's how you detect lies. I think where people get stuck is they think everybody who's going to lie is going to scratch their nose. Like I hear crazy stuff like that all the time. Now, look, if the whole time I'm talking to you, you're sitting like this, which you've been, you've had your pen in your hand, you have your arm crossed. And I ask you something very personal that you don't want to answer.

1:07:39And it could be either it's just personal. You don't want to answer it or it's a secret or there's something that makes you uncomfortable. You want to lie. if all of a sudden you do this, I'm going to notice it because I'm going to say he didn't do it before. Why is he doing it now? That's how it works. One part of your job was catching the lie. The other part was you've been a spy. You've been somebody who has lied to people, right? The Russian story I was listening, like you lured a specific Russian. Was that your story? Remember? Oh, the Russians? Yeah. Which one? That's the one story I was reading that...

1:08:15Oh, when I would do undercover work. Yes, you do undercover work. So you would live to lie, right? You would do undercover. Undercover is kind of being, mixing up with people, trying to do the espionage work, being the spy. So you did that. So you lied for living. I did, I did. I'm sorry, I did. But for good. So your whole identity was lie. You would become someone else. Yes. How to become a good liar? Well, when I did undercover work, one of the things that helped me is because I did not look like an agent. So I felt very safe. I felt very safe and comfortable and maybe confident because I did not think anybody would suspect me of anything.

1:08:57So that was a big thing. If you feel safe, you're not as nervous and scared. I remember once I pretended to be somebody who was being sex trafficked and I had to pretend to be from another country. Tell me about the story. Where was it? this was here actually in new york and it was with an organized crime ring and sadly in new york there's a lot of sex trafficking different countries uh do it i had to pretend to be a girl girl from i think it was an i pretended to be from like the eastern block europe over there so i had to adopt an accent so i could sound like that and um what i was doing i was trying to infiltrate an organized crime ring that was selling passports real documents real birth certificates passports originals uh to terrorists this is actually really the case so you've got two crimes happening at the same time but in this scenario i needed to catch this organized crime ring that was selling legitimate documents to people in the u.s who wanted to commit crime by proxy though to everybody else other other crime rings other different things so i came in as a person who's being sex trafficked and i said look i'm here they took my documents.

1:10:08I want to get a cell phone. You know, I would, I would lie. Like you can't do it. Once they take your documents here, you can't do anything. You can't even get a phone because they're going to ask you for ID. I don't have no ID. They took it all. I can't do anything. That's why it's really horrible what they do to these young girls. They cripple them completely and they are absolutely dependent on their, the people that have brought them here and they can't get out of it. And they'll tell you all, you'll work it off. You'll get it back or they'll give you some money and then you go back to your host country if they let you leave.

1:10:37So in this scenario, I was trying to catch someone who's selling these documents. So I pretended to be sex trafficked so he could believe me, but I was really, they were really looking at him. I wasn't looking at him. It wasn't my case. They were really looking at him as someone who was selling these documents all over the place to people. So I had to make deals with him. So I bought documents from him, gave him cash he gave me documents fake documents fake name fake this but real passports and stuff and then my job was to bring other girls to him to get paperwork so that was an undercover that i did and that was albanian russian i this is the but but it was an organized crime ring i want to say it was albanian um and i i did that one out of brooklyn so what i had to do here is because he was so hard to catch.

1:11:26I had to do numerous transactions and it was me and we had some other girls who are, they're not girls, they were law enforcement like me who didn't look it. We gathered enough on him and then the case agent took it to what's called a grand jury here in the US and they showed all the evidence and then said here, they did this in secret because you don't want the guy to know that you're doing this because he's going to flee. They did this in secret and said, look at everything, all these transactions we've done, they're undercover. can you give us a uh a warrant technically it's not a warrant they give you a an indictment they indict the person which is sort of like saying yes go arrest him so they give you that and when you get an indictment it's locked in and you go get the person the problem with arresting someone on the fly is if you don't have enough then the prosecutors can say i don't have enough you have to let them go so that's why you want to collect as much as you can that way it's locked tight And when you take it to a grand jury and you get an indictment, you're pretty solid.

1:12:23That means you've worked with the prosecutors to say, yeah, yeah, you get me this. You got me this stuff. We're going to give you an indictment. Go get the person. So that's what the sex trafficking. And it's sad because you would think New York City, right? NYPD, America, why do we have sex trafficking? And yet we do because people take advantage of the visa system. They take advantage of like how people come in. They take they take advantage. You know, so America is great because you have all these freedoms and you allow for all these things. But when you allow for all these things, there's a group of people that will abuse these systems.

1:12:59But were you able to catch the guy? They caught the guy. Yes, they caught the guy. I didn't because I was the undercover, but they did catch the guy. Yes. You've interrogated one of the top dreaded criminals in the world. you understand interrogation very well you've extracted information out of people which has helped protect your country you're one of the top experts in the world right now right i want to understand if you would have gotten in the room with few people in the world how would you have interrogated them to extract certain information out of them so i'm going to bring one by one okay One is the highly spoken controversial man right now.

1:13:47Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein. If you were to interrogate him, how would you do that? So you're looking at someone very wealthy, knows everybody. I mean, this guy knew presidents from all sorts of countries, princes. So you're going to deal with somebody what? Very confident and probably very narcissistic. And he's probably extremely narcissistic and arrogant because to do the stuff he did, right? He's thinking I'm untouchable. So you're going to have that person in the room. With him, you would need days with him. So I'd say five days. I'd ask to sit and talk to him for five days if he's willing to meet with me.

1:14:24And let's say he is. The first few days, I would talk about anything but the case. Tell me about yourself. How'd you grow up? How are you feeling, Jeffrey? Can I get you food? Do you need anything? How is it in here? I would just talk I just want this guy talking because this guy because he's not going to be talking this guy's smart he's smart he's not going to talk so I just want him talking I need to build trust and build rapport here's the thing when you're in law enforcement remember how before we were talking about everybody hates police yeah what kind of trust you think you're going to have not zero less than zero so I need to build trust with this guy and maybe I just talk to him about anything and everything because i'm not expecting a confession from him but what i would like to get from him is some information i want to know how he did it maybe i want to know who was involved i've already got him so i don't need the confession from epstein because i actually have enough to convict him right but what i want from him if i i want to know who he played with who was on his island how did he get the girls what did he do i want to know how he ran the business who else is lawyer yes i want to know how big this thing goes that's what i would want to know you already got this guy so if you've got a loctite case on him it's like talk to me about everybody else that's what i want and he might give you other people why to help himself maybe he gets uh not such a bad prison maybe maybe he gets a slight slightly better deal again it depends what you're charging him with so that's that's what you would do with this guy so him you're gonna i would want to know who his circle of people are, who he brought to the island, who did what, who did this, because then I can get more people and I can get these people.

1:16:04Because think about one of the issues with the Jeffrey Epstein case that people are very upset about and angry about is they want to know who else. He's gone. He's done. But he didn't die with them because they're like, wait, all these other people were committing all these crimes with him and they're influential people, they're powerful people. Who are they? They want names. I wouldn't want names. that's Jeffrey. That he might give me. If you build enough trust. Yeah. If I built enough trust and I'm like, hey, Jeffrey, if you give me names, let me see what I can do. I'll talk to them. But what would you have to made him believe for him to cooperate with other names?

1:16:42That it's to his benefit. That something positive for him can come of it. Like you can tell that this is for, because he knows that he's going out, he's going in and he's never coming out. So you already know no more deal is not. know what they would have charged him yet i mean i don't know like but with what we know of what we know he's never coming out like if he was a person but you can make his stay a little bit better it's also what kind of prison or jail is it going to be put in right maybe it can be a prison that's not so prison-y you know that there's different types so maybe you make his life a little bit easier what type of prisons are there if you there so there's jails there's there's prisons there's some uh prisons that are um and not maximum security but minimum security so it's a little bit easier you have more movement right so there's there's different places they can house them in so maybe you tell them look i'll put you in this minimum security prison it's a better life style your food's better like when you're when you're locked up little things make a difference because you have nothing fair right or maybe he cares about something or someone in his life and you're like hey i'll make sure this person's is safe yeah or taken care of or something.

1:17:54So there's things you can pull at if he has something he cares about. God.

1:18:02What would you do with him? How would you interrogate him? Because these are going to be two different people. So he's... You know what's interesting? This guy... This guy is more lethal than this guy. This guy is probably a little bit of a coward. And here's why. who did he prey upon? The young girls. This guy's weak. Because you could tell because who he preyed upon. This guy's nothing. This guy might even cry in the room. This guy, no. Because who did he deal with? Other drug dealers. Right? Other dealers. He's moving stuff. He's lethal. Guns, weapons. This guy's really serious. So another one that might not talk to you, another one that might actually choke you out in the room, So I'd want to make sure I'm safe.

1:18:54Number one, um, with him, I would want to know about his network. Same thing. I already got you. I want to know about your network. Now him, if he has family that he cares about, um, that's where you're going to get him, his family, his loved ones, making sure they're taken care of and safe. So you might get him, you know, it's interesting with, with someone like this, it's like they have family they care about. Um, they give money back to society or the poor, they do other things. So it's, it's like a weird dichotomy. I'm dealing drugs, I'm doing this and I'm killing people with my drugs and I'll kill you.

1:19:26But at the same time, I take care of my community. I have my faith. So it's almost like this, it's almost like this dual person that you're dealing with. So with him, I would approach the good part of him, not the drug dealer part. So it's called chasing the good. I would chase the good part of him. You're a good man. You have a family you care about, you try to do the right thing by people. you help the community you donate money you care you know you're you're that's what you're going to focus on with him i want the good part of pablo not the bad part of pablo so same thing someone like this high level a criminal you need a few days with him you're not going to get anything a couple of hours you're only going to talk about the good things so that he starts believing in it that you also believe him because if i chase it's chasing the good if i talk to you and i pull out the good part of Raj, the good part of Raj is going to show up.

1:20:17If I sit and tell Raj what a terrible person he is and all the bad things he's done, what part of Raj am I going to pull out? The bad part of Raj. And the bad part of Raj is going to show up. And even if I'm right, you're going to have something called reactance. You're going to be defensive. You're going to fight me even if I'm right, because I'm hurting you. I'm knocking you down. so you have to like preserve people's dignity so with him also a very smart person a businesswoman a business excuse me a business person so you want to talk to him a certain way and treat me with respect this guy's going to be big on respect by the way so you have to show him respect in the room because he's always been treated with exactly he wouldn't like it if you show him his place Oh, and he's going to look at me like I'm nothing.

1:21:04I'm Pablo Escobar. Who are you? Some stupid little secret service agent? What do you think you're going to get out of me? So maybe in some ways, like he'd underestimate me. Also, I'm a woman. He might look at me like, oh, what's she going to do? So he might just talk to me about whatever. Talk to me about whatever. I don't care as long as he's talking. Because he would not talk at first place at all because his ego weren't allowed to talk to you. I think these people, someone like this is smart. It's smart. unless he gets something out of it. And again, let's say you have his family, you up-rented his family, a spouse, children or anything.

1:21:38You're like, hey, I'll make sure they're taken care of if you do this. But what are you trying to get out of him because you've caught on his network, you've caught on every... No, I got him. I don't have his whole network. You have it, but you caught him because you found out... But maybe I want to get the number two Escobar and the number three Escobar so nobody else jumps in. All these guys move. When I bring the system down, maybe he can tell me about the other dealers, the other are cartels there's always something to learn that's that's why you do interviews usually at this point when you have someone like this and this you don't need the confession confession is nice but most of the time if something like this you don't need it because if you're going after somebody like this you've got you've got enough to lock them away you don't want to mess around yeah so that's what i would do here let's say you lock him up you arrest him and then you have to let it go.

1:22:29You want to make sure that when you arrest somebody that you don't have to let them go. And that's that you've got the charges and the proof that you have is tight enough to hold them. That's one of the worst things that can happen when you arrest someone. And this was with my cases too. When I would work a case, I always would go to the US attorney's office. That's how it works here, which is a person who would prosecute. And I'd say, I'm investigating Pablo. This is what I have. Can we get him? and most often they'd say we can get them but i don't know if i can hold them what i need you to do is go get me this this this and this you get me this we got a loctite case and so you would go out and try to get the different things so like when i worked undercover part of the reason i was doing the undercover stuff or i was asked to do it is they didn't have enough you want enough evidence on someone that you've got them so that if they have a really good attorney or they try to argue that they can't get out of it that you want to make sure you get a guilty verdict if they go to trial because all this is for nothing if the guy's found not guilty fair let me change a little bit these two are different and this is how would you interrogate him because he's not like any of them no with ted bundy i would kind of talk to him about his life and his childhood you know what he what are you trying to get out of him i want first i just want to talk it's always like these guys are like all heavy hitters so you don't need these are all full day like multiple day interviews just let's be clear yeah yeah these guys are multiple day interviewers with him you know what's interesting with him you might want to understand why he did it uh because there's no other network of people with him these guys are different he's he's a sole actor so with him it would be like can you get the confession.

1:24:21I think it also with him more would be like, what's going on up here? Because it's a very unique situation with how he was targeting people, luring them in, killing people. You want to understand, he's more of understanding human behavior. This is kind of like serial killer type of psychology. And what prompts someone to get to this point? So this would be more of a psychoanalysis. This actually wouldn't be hard because again, assuming I don't need a confession. If I need a confession, it's tough because now I'm trying to get you to confess and I'm getting you to confess and getting you to confess.

1:24:58But with him, this would be more of a, why did you do what you did? Why did you target people? And can you prevent behavior like this in the future? Someone like this doesn't get there overnight. You don't become a serial killer overnight. I remember once you asked me before about polygraphs when I would do applicants. I remember I had one applicant who was one to be secret service agent. And he told me when he was growing up, he would burn cats. Like he would sit cats on fire. So I was like, all right, tell me how many cats. And I always started high, a thousand, you know, 900. I mean, I gave some crazy numbers in case it was a thousand or 900.

1:25:37So I think it was like, he's like, oh, maybe I've burned like about 100 cats growing up. And I was like, tell me about why you would burn them. Now, why do I care about him burning cats? I mean, it's wrong to hurt animals. But if you're burning cats, what's next? Do you see? You start off maybe with kicking the cat, maybe declawing it, pulling it, hitting it. Then you burn it a little bit, you burn it a little bit more, then I'm going to burn another cat, another cat. That's how these guys serial killers go. next and then next everything's a slippery slope in life raj if you don't keep yourself in check you can make anything okay anything you want okay if you want to so he didn't become ted bundy overnight things happened to him over a period of time he did this and then this and then this and then you get to this place so i would want to understand him but then see with with these two guys you're for him you're trying to understand who else is involved with him you're trying to understand how the cartel operates and what is the how with the network how the cartel does in the operations right their tunnels how they bring the drugs over i mean these guys some of these they use submarines they buy submarines it's ingenious they have tactical gear they have military grade gear who gave you the gear is it the government because there's there's times where I would go work in Central or South America.

1:26:59And with some countries, they were like, be careful. Because a lot of the police worked with the cartels. So I had to be really careful. Yeah. So with these guys, we know what you're trying to get out of them. With them, why do you want to know about the childhood? What will be the outcome if you get to know how we reach there? Can you prevent people like this from coming into the world? And then, you know, because you're going to - at certain point in childhood where things must have changed. Are there things you can do? Are there signs you can see in other people? Right? Think of mass shootings.

1:27:29We have them here in the US or random shootings or, right? So what are some of the indicators to prevent that? So this is more of like understanding the human mind, the psychology of it. That's really what you would get from this person here. And you'd want to know how to lure them, but lure people in or get people. And he, it was very kind of simple what he did. So there's no other intricate thing. he would be more of understanding him and and how people like him think and behave look it helps you I do the news and whenever an incident happens often I'll be on air with someone oh another crazy person did this and I always think to myself when you label somebody crazy how does that help how can you prevent stuff from like this happening if everybody's crazy then there's nothing to do we just label everybody crazy but when you try to understand the human mind what breaks people or causes people to get to this point can you prevent it because crime is not going to stop raj but what can you do to minimize this stuff otherwise we should just let everybody do whatever and then all we do is punish people you want to be preemptive so it's not just about being reactive you commit a crime you throw handcuffs on a person this and that are there things we can do to stop?

1:28:43So like the US Secret Service, they have National Threat Assessment Center where they try to assess and they've actually worked with the Department of Education in the past, which is the school system here to try to help them identify a school shooter before they do it. They looked at characteristics. So if you can figure out what characteristics exist between the Ted Bundys of the world or serial killers or people do this stuff, you can help maybe minimize or prevent it or teach schools or systems or workplaces or police to look for signals that maybe you can catch the stuff before it gets bad.

1:29:20What signals did you read? Like what signals did they find out in guys who would turn into a mass shooter? Mass shooters. So there's a couple of things that you would see. One of them... Are there signs in a child that you can tell that this person might become psychopath it's it's it's behavior stuff so so a couple of patterns you would see one was people who committed mass shootings tend to have something happen to them like a life change or maybe a breakup with a girlfriend or a partner or a spouse something happened there that's one so you would see that you would also see um they had access to weapons so they were able to either there was a weapon in the home, or they knew someone who gave them the weapon.

1:30:04There's certain attributes. They typically communicate it to someone at some point. So at some point, they've told somebody, I'm going to do this, whether in joke or not. So that's another thing that they would look at. All these little things help school spot the person in advance. Because the point is - But these are such normal things, right? Like I'm not talking about access to weapon, but having a breakup or telling your friends that I would do some random shit. But not everybody has the same internal fortitude that you have. Not everybody's stable. There's people who are of weak mind and body.

1:30:42I understand that, but how can you identify this as a pattern? Because you can see 100 people going through breakup and 100 people joking about, hey, you know what, I'm going to kill that person. And like, sometimes it could be just jokes and randomly people talking about it. Right. But the point is to pay attention and maybe to ask that student, hey, come into the office. Let me talk to you. Or if that person works for you, hey, come on here. So that you at least notify, you can notify somebody. That's the thing. Maybe you can notify, maybe you can see that off behavior and you can tell somebody.

1:31:14And sometimes police can't do anything. That's another problem. Like sometimes people also sometimes if it's an adult with mass shooters, You may see that they've been interviewed by law enforcement before at some point. That's also another possibility. So with that, it just helps show certain indicators that you'll see amongst these people. They're not easy things to spot, no. But often, too, they're planning them. So who did they share the plans with? If they live with someone in the house, a person in the home maybe can notice the behavior and say something. most often the problem with these mass shootings is people don't notify anybody or they don't notify hey you know uh i live with my with ted ted's been acting a little weird lately can i talk to someone about it and until it's too late maybe at least if you put ted on the radar and people are looking into ted maybe they can do something to intercept ted's behavior so people don't die.

1:32:19I might stop at one or two and not extend to like hundreds. Exactly. So you're looking at Ted and Ted's fine, but I want to make sure Ted doesn't kill other people. What can I do to stop Ted from taking lives? He's really just trying to preserve human life at the end. So if I can intercept it, get this mass shooter some help, right? Ted's not a mass shooter, but if I can get the mass shooter some help, I can prevent it. True. Here's the last person that I want to understand about. This one's close to you. Ah, Osama bin Laden. How would you interrogate him and what will you try to find out from him?

1:32:55So I've interviewed terrorists before.

1:33:00The one thing with Osama, you're going to spend days, Osama's going to love talking about himself and his cause and his organization. So you're going to have, one of the reasons they think he did what he did was for significance. because he came from a big family and I think he was kind of overlooked by some of his family members. So he wanted to stand out. There's theories that he was an insecure individual. And so this is why he did what he did. So with him, you would wanna tap into that. Tell me about what you did. Tell me about why you're doing this. He's gonna wanna profess to you. I did this for the greater good.

1:33:39He thinks 9-11 was a good thing. Yes? Yes. Yeah, that's what he believes in. Tell me why you believe that. Tell me why you feel wrong. He wants a platform to profess. Give it to him. Sure, I'll listen. And what will you achieve out of that when you give him a platform and in an interrogation, you know he's going to say the same five things which he's been saying in the world. What are you going to achieve out of this? So when people talk, Raj, they leak information. So when they're talking, even though they think they're not saying anything, they're saying something. So what are you looking for?

1:34:16I'm looking for names. I'm looking for places. I'm looking for locations. I'm looking to who they're talking to. I'm looking for dates of when he was where. And he might think, this is stupid stuff, I'll tell her. But maybe I have intelligence on something else and I want to corroborate dates and times. Maybe I can link other attacks to him. Maybe I can figure out where he's getting his guns from. Maybe I can figure out who's next in command after him. Maybe I can figure out who he's working with. Maybe I can figure out how big his network is and what other countries it spans into. Maybe I can figure out where his money is coming from.

1:34:46Who's giving him money? He needs money to do this. Where are you getting your money from? So I want to understand terrorism. This is terrorism. And that you can achieve when you give him a platform to understand his cause. I'm his platform. Tell me, tell me more. And make him believe that you understand the cause. That's how? I do understand the cause. I don't agree with the cause. I accept it. But you're going to make him believe that you are understanding the cause and you're trying to understand more so that he starts believing in you more and start talking. But I want information. All these people more or less are giving me information either to prevent something happening in the future so we can take the stuff.

1:35:24You have to learn from the people you arrest. You have to learn from criminals. None of these people are stupid. Do you agree with me on that? Yeah. They're all smart people. They all figured out ways to circumvent things. I want to know. Do you know how many times I would arrest someone and I'm like, how did they pull this off? Especially fraud. There were some people that would run these really intelligent scams. And I'm thinking, how did this guy pull this off? And I'd sit in the room and I would be like, I have to tell you, I worked a lot of criminal cases. I'm impressed. How did you do it?

1:35:53And sometimes just that alone would be like, oh, let me tell you. Because all these dudes are narcissists. oh so the moment you tell them that you're impressed and you actually i'm impressed yeah some some not all but some i'm like i'm impressed i how did you do this oh let me tell you how i did it please tell me they get excited some do that's a trick that you guys will pull off it's not i don't know if it's a trick actually it's true i'm impressed i don't know how you did this i would have never seen this coming would you ever seen like the idea of somebody flying to flying commercial planes into the buildings and where would you see that?

1:36:27Like the imagination that that took to create. Who thinks to do that? Who thinks to do that? This guy. And then what other plans does he have in place? Because you're assuming just because I caught him that there's nothing else going down. Right? Who are the assets? Does he have spies? Does he have people talking to other people. I want to know. So everything's going to lead to somewhere if you take the time to talk. I'll say this. One mistake that sometimes investigators do, police do, they think, I got my guy. I'm going to tell you what a piece of garbage you are, and I'm going to put you through the system, but I got my guy.

1:37:09You don't know what other victims this guy has. I would especially see this with child abuse cases or child sexual abuse cases or predators like guys like this let's say i got jeffrey and i i know he victimized one girl but there's probably with with child victims there's another 200 girls usually with these guys but what police do is like oh i caught the guy that did this to this person how do you know there's no other victims i want to catch the other victims that this person's had and then link them to him. So people who commit crime don't often commit one crime. They have multiple victims.

1:37:48There's multiple plans. There's multiple attacks they're doing. Who would be the easiest to talk to and the toughest to talk to? Him I could talk to. Him I could talk to. He might be tough because he's a dealer, a drug dealer cartels I mean they're Osama might not be tough he might it might be he might be tough for me because I'm a woman and I'm white so I'm like the lowest of the low for him which is why I learned Arabic because I did interviews overseas so I knew I was going in at a deficit I'm a woman I'm white I'm Christian I'm American I mean I've got nothing going for me less than zero so often I would actually go with a male partner and even if my male partner was junior to me I would let my male partner lead and I would be in behind.

1:38:37But I learned Arabic because I'm like, I have to find things, ways to connect with this person. And so over time, it almost would happen all the time. I would, they would start looking at me instead of my partner and I would start talking and I would throw in some Arabic and they're like, oh, she speaks some. And I would listen and I would just have conversations. You know what I didn't do? I never brought up 9-11. I never said, hey, you know, those two big buildings you knocked down, I was in them. I never said that I mean excuse me I was there I never said that because who did I make that interview about when I did that you he didn't need to know I would never tell him because now it's personal and that would be a mistake my goal is where's the next next attack coming from so okay just last two questions on this so one was who would be the toughest to talk to would be I think he might be the toughest for me because I'm a white female blonde.

1:39:32Maybe, maybe. People surprise you. Yeah. You don't know who people are. You don't know what's going on. But I think he might be the toughest. Because you know what too? He's willing to die for what he believes in. He's willing to die. Because that's what this is premise on, death. I will die for my cause. This is a deep, deep ideology, a deep belief. This was for himself, right? This is, he's abusing girls. He's dealing drugs. He's making money, right? This guy's just got, psychopath, right? Issues. No one's willing to die. This guy's willing to die for what he believes in. This is a deep faith.

1:40:13This is harder. And what one mistake you could make with each one of them? One, one mistake an interrogator could make, which will just blow up the entire interrogation. You say something that isn't true. You make an assumption. like you you said with him the moment you tell him something personal that you were there in the building it would just blow it up everything because you you've made it personal i would never bring up 9-11 my personal experience yeah never never yeah so that's the biggest mistake you can make with them you make it these guys what would be the mistake an interrogator could make which will blow up the entire interrogation the one thing you don't want to do it's like how could you do this?

1:40:54I started making them feel like, if you're like, I can't believe you, you sexually assaulted all those girls, you abused, you brought these girls, who does that? What kind of sick person are you? It's just game over. You have to leave your ego out of the room and sometimes people can't. And like, no matter what he tells you, you have to accept it. You're not agreeing, I'm accepting. And you also have to not show it in your face. If you show disgust in your face, Raj he's not going to talk to you he's going to filter what he says he's going to stop talking altogether your goal is to get information your goal is not to be the judge and jury the goal is to be a neutral slate that they can each talk to you have to bring the version of you that they need to open up and for you to get information it is not about you most often people bring themselves and you should not bring yourself I don't matter the victims matter so I need to find out what he was doing and how he did it I also need to find out who else partook in this because there has to be justice because it's the right thing to those victims and you also want to make sure other you're assuming he's the only guy that's doing this how do you know how do you know there's not another guy that's doing this and he knows about them I want to know I want to know who else they're talking to you get enough people that gets if you know how to talk to people and they start to talk about other people it's like give me information.

1:42:17Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, which is ironic. I hate to talk. I do it for a podcast, but in real life, I don't like to talk. I like to be quiet and listen. You learn more. You learn more. So with all these people, the biggest mistake you can do is judge them and show it in your face. And anything in life, when people feel judged, and it can be hard, especially in personal relationships where you want to look at someone and be like, what the fuck are you thinking? What are you doing? Are you crazy? But the minute you do that, you lose them. It's hard. True. It's hard. I think personal relationships are harder.

1:42:52These guys, not so much because I can detach. You know, while we were doing the briefing, you said something very interesting. You said it's the worst time to be a world leader. Yeah. Why? I think, so here's the thing. When you meant, two things, when you meant to harm a world leader, like for example, the president of the United States, if you want to harm him or you wanted to voice harm, there's only a couple of ways you could do it. You could, you had to physically show up somewhere to harm him. You would have to write a letter because people write letters or you would have to phone it in. And so that level of contagion of hate was kind of isolated.

1:43:35So now you move to social media where everybody has a voice. Everybody and anybody have a voice. You've given everybody a megaphone. And I do think not everybody, I think we've shown as humanity, like we're not responsible and accountable enough to have this. And I mean this across the board, even some politicians, I read things. I'm like, why are you, you're, you're a leader. Why would you write such a thing? And this is across the board. This is one side versus another. It's very sometimes disappointing when I see the things people write. so but what happens is think of it this way you're in a mob it's a mob but it's an online mob and so when you see hate here hate here hate here narratives it's infectious and so people now jump on this bandwagon half the time they don't know what they're reading is true and even having worked in government i can't tell you how many times it would either be people would come to me with their conspiracy theories or theories or tell me things that i knew factually were not true sometimes I couldn't say anything and I'm thinking wow they just they whatever they read they think is true and so hate is infectious so if you keep reading like this world leader is horrible that world leader is horrible this is happening and and and people just write whatever then it it does not just create more hate what it does is people think that this world leader This person's a horrible person and the world would be better if I got rid of them.

1:45:01And so now they think that what they're doing or if they try to cause harm, it's justified. I'm doing something good in the world. Look at all these people writing all these hateful things. I'm going to get rid of this person. And they don't realize that there's human beings can justify and sell anything to themselves. Yeah. I did criminal polygraphs, crimes, and I would sit across people. And they would do some, some crimes were big, sometimes were small, but no matter what crime it was, I am telling you, Raj, I think 99.9 % of the time they sold it to themselves. I know I did this, but I did it because of X, Y, and Z.

1:45:41You can justify anything. You can justify hurting another human being, whether emotionally or physically. If you want to sell it to yourself, you will. I had one, it was a bank employee, a person who worked in the bank and they were stealing money from the bank. most fraud in banks half of it probably half of it happens from within the bank and this person was stealing money because so i'm interviewing them and i'm like hey you know tell me about you know you taking that money and after some time the person finally says yes i took the money because i was doing the polygraph i was interviewing them and they're like listen yeah but it's not my fault i took the money it's their fault and so i'm like please please explain well they left the money out they didn't secure the money when you get money when the money of the bank.

1:46:25It's supposed to be secured in this location. They should have cameras. They should lock it up. But they didn't do that. They left the money out. There were no cameras in the area. So clearly they don't care about their customers' money. So if they cared, they'd lock it up, not leave it out there. So it's their fault I stole the money. If you care about that money, lock it up. But to me, they don't care about the money. They didn't care if I took it. That's how they justified it. That's how they sold it to themselves. so people do that consistently now when it comes back to threats people can justify why they would want to hurt or harm a world leader because there's plenty of negative things to read the other thing is what's becoming a problem especially with this current environment people now post their threats so if you're doing protection like one of the things the secret service has to do is they have to look at a threat and then say is this credible is it not And do I have the manpower to send to go talk to this person?

1:47:22So think about now all the people writing these hate, not just hateful things, but I want to kill or I want to take out. Right. Do I have enough people all over the country to send to to go interview this person? And if I interview this person, I have to make a decision. Are they truly going to cause harm or not? Are they a threat or not? Because there are times where you're like, all right, I don't think there's anything here. But then that person goes and does something. And now you're in trouble because you didn't deem it a credible threat. It is very hard. So now you're not just chasing people that show up, people that write letters or people that make calls.

1:48:01Now you have to go through all these social media feeds. You have to work with the social media companies and call up X and say, hey, X. Big Guns wrote this comment that they want to take out the president. Can you please release to me who Big Guns is? the handle, big guns, where are they located? I need to go interview and find this person. And is X gonna give that to you because there's privacy issues? So it's a horrible environment to be in. Well, here was last three questions which I ask every guest, okay? One is, when have you felt the most powerless in your life?

1:48:48And probably, I think 9-11 was probably the day I felt very powerless because I was the World Trade Center and it's where we worked. And you're watching thousands of people die and you can't do anything. specifically when I remember I was standing by the Vessi Street, the West Side Highway, and that's when both towers were on fire. And there were people you could see, they don't show it now in the news, but you could see people in the holes waving stuff. And there was a lot of people, a lot. And you see them there and they're all the way up there and you don't know how to get to them and they started jumping.

1:49:32They would just jump. And you're literally watching people choose to jump rather than burn. And there's nothing you can do. And you feel like absolutely worthless. That human beings are dying and you can't do anything other than watch them die. That was sad. That's worthless. How did you overcome that? Because that sight must have given you nightmares for months. You overcome it. One, you know, like I have this saying, I'm not that special. And anytime I begin to feel sad or, because we're all human, I always tell myself, I'm not that special. There's somebody who's got it worse than me. as going through harder things than I am.

1:50:26And I'm not that special. Cause like when you think you're special, you think your problems are special. You think your pain is special. You think you're suffering is special. And I'm not. The other thing is there were a lot of more people that lost, there were people that lost more than I did on that day. So I always remind myself of that. I remind myself that I lived and others did not. And so I promised myself that if I would live through it, which I did. I would live a good life. When I say good life, you know, I chased meaning over money. And not that money is bad. I believe in wealth and all that stuff.

1:51:03I think it's a good thing. But I promised myself that if my time came again, because I was lucky, I wasn't killed. I could have been, it was a moment where I was, I probably should have died and I did not. And I promised myself, you know, if I live through this, I'm going to live a meaningful life. So that when I go, the next time, because next time is going to come, I'm ready to go. So I chose to look at it as a blessing. See, you have protected people. You have gathered information. You have interrogated people in your life. You have lied for living. I'm a good liar. You're a good liar, right?

1:51:43You've caught people lying. You've protected precedents. And you've served the country. You've done so many things. To be successful at what you do, what is the cost that you personally paid? Pain. You got to be good at taking pain. Pain. That's it. Pain. If you're good at eating shit, if you're good at the world and life being hard, you're going to be fine. You'll be successful. I don't care how smart you are, how skilled you are, none of that matters. You must be resilient. You must have a pain tolerance. Pain. You can sit and wallow in it. And I'm not saying that sometimes we're like, oh my God, I can't believe this happened to me.

1:52:27And you can, you're going to get stuck. Bad things happen to everybody all the time. It's the people that keep moving. You have to keep moving. And also, you know what I'll say to people? When something terrible happens to you, it doesn't mean it's not terrible. Please don't make it an excuse. well this bad thing happened to me and that's why I did this this bad thing happened to me and that's why I'm stuck here it's still a choice you you and I say it not to make people feel bad but to let you know like you can choose don't let anybody make you think like and I think sometimes in an effort sometimes it's like we tell the narrative becomes a little bit like oh but this bad thing happens to you, that's why you behave this way.

1:53:11And then now people think, oh, I am stuck here. And it's like, you're not, you're not. So that's where that victim thing comes in. I'm a victim of this. This person did that. I always, always, always anything bad happens to me or anything negative. I always ask myself, what role did I play in this? Because when I do that, I never blame anybody else. Even when people wrong me, we're all going to get wrong. I always look at what could I have done differently? Because when I do that, I bring the power back to me. I'm in charge. I have power to change my circumstance. But when this guy was a jerk to me, or that person talked about me, or this person did this bad thing to me, this person lied to me, or this person manipulated me, I am powerless.

1:53:56So I guess it's two things. One is be able to look at yourself and say, how am I responsible here and what can I do differently? Because that makes you powerful. It doesn't mean you blame yourself. It means I have the ability to change this. And the two is withstanding the bad stuff. If you can withstand the pain, it's pain tolerance. Have a great pain tolerance. You'll be fine. But it's people that don't have good pain tolerance that they just, they become annihilated. But does that make you numb? Is the cost of surviving in your career is becoming numb? not feel pain at all no you're resilient you don't not feel you feel and you it just doesn't crush you it doesn't crush you it's not that you don't feel anything you feel for every i would feel for people i arrested there were people i felt bad for that i arrested i couldn't not arrest them so i was kind to them or respectful to them i make sure they ate or fed them or sometimes i would ask people i would tell people i have to arrest you and this was with non-violent crimes do you want me to show up at your house or your work?

1:55:02Or do you want to show up to my office? I'll give you a choice. And these were people that I knew I could track them. So I would give people a choice. Do you want to self-surrender? It's called self-surrender. Do you want me to come find you? What would you like? So I'm a human being. I don't have to be a jerk in life. I feel you can feel and still do it. People think like, oh, I don't want to feel bad. I feel bad about many things. I feel shame about many things. I feel guilt about many things. I suffer like everybody else. I just, I still experience it, but I keep moving. What do they say? You know, progress, no matter how slow is still progress.

1:55:43It's not about not feeling. That's why sometimes people think like, I want to forget that this happened to me. I want to forget the pain. Why? why it's a when you feel bad it means you're a good human being agreed agreed well thank you so much for coming here spending time with us and teaching us about so many things thank you hi hi hello Raj nice to meet you Raj good to meet you Raj this is Teddy hi Raj thank you for having me on at that time you wouldn't have seen like the real India right you would be on duty you would be on yeah Yeah. I mean, you're with them. You can experience the country.

1:56:22Yes. I mean, sometimes if you get some downtime, but again, you're in that bubble. So you don't get to really go too far. You have to stay with the group, in a sense. And then that, I'm assuming, in every country would be the same. Like the nice hotel, everywhere is the same thing. You stay usually near them or where they stay. Yeah. Which is obvious. Yeah. And then also, though, for safety reasons, too. And let me think about this if I can share this. Bathrooms sometimes are used as hard rooms, they're called. They're rooms where you can tactically fight. So you're looking at it as a bathroom bathroom.

1:57:02I'm looking at it as bathrooms are great places to stage a fight, to protect. Because there's one way in, one way out. So if I'm going to have my protectee, I'm going to throw him in there. and that doorway is the only way in and out and that's going to be my fighting stance. So that might have been their hard room. Thank you for watching this episode till the end. We would love to know what you liked or disliked about this episode and which guests you would like to see on the show. Let us know in the comments. Your feedback help us improve and make every episode a little better. I'll see you next time.

1:57:41Until then, keep figuring out.

1:57:46Thank you.