we're going to actually kill these people that are on TV too like journalists and like news people and they're like yeah this is just the beginning the FBI doesn't have a good public perception right now we haven't since coming January 6 a lot of people say there were a lot of agent provocator do you believe that I would find that hard to believe I I wasn't there I did infiltrate militia groups who were there in the Outlaws I was in for a year and a half and then they brought me down into the basement of the clubhouse and stripped me at gunpoint looking for a wire I was wired the hill and they missed it the division that's being caused it does seem like there is some type of movement that is not open in public but it is open because we can see it happening it is a fact that our adversaries overseas they do put money into the states and not just on white supremacy side they do it on the far left side cuz they want chaos I don't care which belief system you got it's just evil yes Scott pay welcome to podcast thank you very much retired undercover FBI agent um overall great dude we have a lot of mutual friends as well yes uh John T Y uh Glenn Jacobs Rich walls that whole crew so uh I appreciate them introducing uh you know us and looking forward to this podcast yeah me too so um you know you were an undercover FBI agent how long were you in the FBI for I was in the FBI for 23 years but I was a uh I usually term it as I was a real cop first um in South Carolina uh five years so three as a uniform Patrol but two as a vice and narcotics investigator so on a street level I was already starting to do undercover work making Street buys and stuff like that so that's when I started really getting the undercover bug and then I got hired by the FBI and you know as soon as I could get into the program or you try to get into the program it's a it's a tough program to get into the certification process is pretty gruesome some some say it's the it's the hardest thing to get certified in in the FBI I I'll put HRT hostage rescue team above it cuz you know that's more physical but yeah so where were you uh a street cop at first Greenville South Carolina Greenville South Carolina and you you went to the FBI and we'll go through like a a timeline of everything I think that'd be interesting sure to kind of go through your career and talk about the different cases um because you got some pretty famous cases you worked on yeah um so you get into the FBI wanting to be an undercover uh FBI agent um once you got in what what was the process and uh where did you go so uh when I got hired by the FBI you know you're going through the academy and uh you got 56 field offices you don't know where you're going to go you can list them but you'll sweat and lose sleep and you go back and change it it really doesn't matter I mean just let me tell you my top 10 if I'm not going to get them send me where you want to send me but I got New York City oh wow so here I am a country boy out of South Carolina and my first office is New York City um I was actually still assigned to New York when 9911 happened it's just that I would that day it happening I was in San Antonio undercover San Antonio Texas undercover so uh you get there I ended up uh as a case agent um going to the Colombian drug Squad and uh yeah I mean you're a brand new agent in New York City they're huge cases I was at the bottom of the Run you're still learning how to be an agent and then uh amazingly after about 3 years in New York City uh I got a transfer to the San Antonio division because of undercover work I was doing and after I finished that undercover I went to the border of Mexico so I was stationed in macallen Texas for 6 and A2 years oh wow working the border and then they came out with a policy that said and it's still the current policy for transfers if you are in a hard to Staff office for five or more years and it's not that Mallen is a hard ship it's just it's hard to staff because you're on the border um if you've done five or more you name which philadelph you want to go to and and you Trump everybody so by the time that policy came out I'd already had 6 and a half years in and I named East Tennessee oh nice you know so so you go into New York like what's the first uh let's say intense undercover situation uh that you were in so I wasn't certified yet as an undercover but you can do like cameos um and because of my background as a as a bis narcotics investigator I'm within ypd you know uh back then they had like 42,000 officers um so we would go and it might be something like there's nothing really intensive uh there was intensive there was some intense stuff when I was in South Carolina buying dope and stuff but in New York I just did a couple of cameos where maybe we've intercepted a a 5,000 uh 5,000 lbs of weed which back then was a big illegal thing you know 98 right um and then we replicate that how it's supposed to be delivered say it gets popped in La then we replicate that uh that shipment I mean everything tape everything and depending on which United States Attorney assistant United States Attorney you're working with they want different things to get the prosecution so we rigged the Box up so once we delivered it to the Jamaican gang um when they popped the lid it notified us and we went in rest everybody so it wasn't a lot of stuff in in New York except for I landed the gig in San Antonio it's a classified case it's like the only classified case I ever did an undercover on it's it's been outed but I don't want to be called back and put on the box that's okay um you went to macallen though after and that's on the border so you're dealing with the cartels you're dealing with a lot of the all the trafficking stuff uh what was that like uh great I mean it's if you if you love working you know I don't to say great because there was bad things but um it was a great Community like all the law enforcement Community or all our wives I mean we were joking cuz like all of our wives were pregnant at the same time we would all go meet our wives for lunch uh we would have like weekend get togethers but a very close-knit tight Community but I got there in 01 and shortly after I mean 911 right they started creating or they they I can't remember when they created The Joint terrorism task force I think it was before yeah it was definitely before 9/11 but after 911 they were cranking everything to it so the flavor of the month down there was special interest alien smuggling and you're starting to hear that more on the news now again it kind of surprised me they haven't changed the name cuz that's I mean the government's notorious for that um but special interest alien smuggling would be people coming into the United States illegally but they're coming from threat countries so China or you know back then maybe even Yemen Al-Qaeda radical Muslim something like that at at one point they even had Brazil listed not because Brazil was known for having terrorists but they were known to have um camps that were helping terrorists get westernized and come in so that's what we were working so all I did as a guy that worked drugs pretty much my entire career um I went to all my contacts at border patrol and stuff and said hey we're changing the focus we're looking for this and we started catching loads and following loads and and getting a lot of Intel but my squad worked violent crime and gangs as well so we had kidnapping kidnappings and extortions I mean three four a week what's it like you know you go into a situation you're undercover I mean you're with murderers people that you know if they uh understood what you were they would kill you probably right there probably depending on the people depend on the people um how do you stay calm in that situation and kind of in uh in character that's a good question cuz the younger in my younger days I was way more Brash and and way more dumb you know uh So you you're more of that I mean you're still type A personality I'm still a type A personality but me and my peers we kind of we kind of figure let's say you're a season undercover you look at a group and you go you're not going in there to do that undercover because it's too dangerous but us and our own head we'll go but I'm going to because I can do this so as far as the the stuff I did on the border as an undercover was like in there on the border I just pretended to be a truck driver stuff like that delivering illegal aliens into a motel that was stashing them or something like that um but while I was in now as a case agent they go hand inand with me like I'm developing sources a source is doing what I do as an undercover it's just that they're not a bonded law enforcement officer they probably have a felony on their record um but they're the ones going in and recording uh and getting evidence for us um I will say that back then oel oel cardus was the head of the golf cartel so there was some kind of like sop you know there was like a standard you know if they kidnap somebody they're calling and and extorting the family they want money we try to start working with them and it essentially we we broke her a deal to where usually we're handing over a vehicle with so many miles on it worth so much money with as much money as the family could come up with to send the person back across um I will say that after the Department of Justice took off ozl things really it created this Gap in Mexico uh in the Gulf especially to where people are now vying for that um they they want to run it mhm like the satas were the enforcement arm for the cartel they did all the kidnapping they collected all the quotas they did the torture and all that stuff well once ozl was taken off they're like well we should be running this show and then sen Loa cartel is like we're coming in and taking over and Ms they things like we're taking over and then the Mexican military is like no we are and and and uh my understanding after I left is the deals where we were like fighting to get somebody released before their phone died um now they're just they're just cutting people's heads off wow they don't even care so what's you know when you're in that situation though and you're dealing with the cartels you know very very dangerous people um not an appreciation for life like correct uh you know the mindset like what what are you thinking are you fully in character or are are you you know knowing that you're still Scott and you've got to act like Bob so with for me um and we we teach this as well um or I still doing the trainings I put on now I try to be as close to me as I can M you know because that's me right right if if if I may not I may or may not be married I may or may not have kids I may or may not be a musician and a singer but you can bet I'll probably lift weights and I'll ride a motorcycle every now and then you you know um so I try to stay towards that I will I will say for me personally if I was doing anything to where let's say it's like a murder For Hire type deal or you're dealing with somebody that stone cold where you're not trying to build a rapport and be buddies that's where I would change my personality the most because I I'm I'm generally a happy go-lucky guy jovial uh love connecting with people of all sizes shapes colors educational level you know um monetary level doesn't matter to me but yeah so if you're dealing with I didn't deal with a cartel so much undercover as I did as a case agent but when you're dealing with those types of people you just got to be on your p's and q's you know you gota you gota um I mentioned this earlier but you you have to you have to be able to see if a situation is deteriorating and it could start deteriorating very quickly um as an undercover and you can have as many cover teams as you want watching you MH but the the real deal is if if if it's going to hit the fan there could be three SWAT teams outside that door I can show you so many tactical videos where they're on the other side of the door bad guy comes in it's a rip he turns he gets eight shots off before they can even get through the door wow so not trying to scare you or or scare you know people doing undercover um but usually we know it's just kind of you're on your you're on your own to a sense yeah absolutely I mean so you're in macallen are you going over the Border back and forth um it's very no no I mean you can but it's there's a I'll give you an example I've got mentors of mine who have now retired um and they did Undercovers in Miami like early 90s late 80s they were hopping on cigarette boats and going right over to Cuba and going you cannot do that now yeah I mean there's so much red tape and headquarters would shut it down and probably right P so right you know who's your cover team but uh yeah it was case agent W like I said the undercover stuff I did there my main undercover I was doing during the time in macallen is when I went in the Outlaws but so I wasn't I wasn't undercover in Mallen but I was undercover in Massachusetts so I would fly I see so that's that's kind of how it worked for me on the border and so uh what year did you uh join the Allies uh that would have been some somewhere around like 2005 to 2007 and 8 okay so between 2005 20078 you you join what's that process how does that happen um well I'll tell you I I'll tell you join is probably not the correct word because the the a lot of the your normal mm MO is you hang out um you become a probate uh if you make it through probation you get your cut um on that particular case we were working uh and don't get me wrong I I would love to have a cut and I I what a cut uh your I'm sorry yeah I'm talking as if everybody knows 1ent biker World um or just the biker world that's your leather vest okay so like if you're the Outlaws uh The Outlaws have their leather cut and their their um their mascot it's the cross Pistons with the skull and the skull is Charlie um and then there's history always going going way back but what we did as a team is and again I would have loved to have have uh a cut but over the last 30 40 years there are so many law enforcement officers that have infiltrated um biker gangs and gotten the cut but the case didn't go well or maybe they lost themselves or just there's so many variables especially when you're dealing with violent people that can turn like that you know it's just uh I thought I thought around 200 sixish I'm like man I'm in the I'm not even in the middle of my career yet and I'm already doing one of these cases I man I want to have like four of these done you know and what I found as the years went on is this very the Stars really have to align to be deep undercover in a violent group where things could just happen somebody gets murdered somebody finds out the source is a source and they beat them up or you just just something happens to where even the FBI is like we're out we're closing this case we're not doing it and that's kind of what started happening over the years several of them I started again but for whatever reason um that worked really well in the Outlaws and what I did is I hung out um I I let them kind of see me get myself known and and then I never joined they asked me to join but I never joined because I was portraying a uh high ranking uh member of an international theft ring so anything that was stolen um me and my truckers were moving it to Mallen in the border which I knew all about you know because they did they would would they would bring stuff down and trade it for dope trade guns for dope with the cartel and vice versa and then you always had some not all but you always there was always an element of corruption around the Border whether it be a Small Town Police Department with only four people uh you know and then you know you're only making $5 to $20,000 a year and the cartel says hey I'll give you 10 to 15 grand anywhere from 5 to 15 grand uh for you to just turn your head for three minutes and let me drive through yeah that's that's a sometimes that's hard to to to go up against yeah no absolutely like what what when you start though like you walk in the bar the biker club like what what's the uh who makes the connection not necessarily the person's name but like how do how do you even go about doing something like that um well what you hope for is that your case team has great intelligence so if you're coming in as an undercover hopefully they've already been on these people long enough to say hey that guy right there he is an attention you know ho he he's got to have attention he loves to be surrounded by big guys that's good stuff to know cuz back then I was running about 64 280 whatever pounds um and of course in Massachusetts as soon as I open my mouth with this accent people are like where are you from you know so you can use that I use that to my advantage and uh what I did is I was I was at the bar they usually hang out at and then I just kind of got to know people and do my thing and then uh the night they came in now you know who the hell is that guy on that's that's text he comes up here all the time and then things start happening and you know somebody yells something at you you send the drink back and forth uh and then uh next thing you know you're invited to the Northeast Regional you know Meetup and then you go into a sea of black leather and testosterone and everybody's looking at you like who the hell are you and the more people you meet the more scrutiny more scrutinized you are and uh yeah so that's kind of how I did it almost like a hanger that's what they would call that hang around but then somewhere in all that and again they have to be predicated so you got to realize in the undercover world the the evidence is usually so overwhelming I'm telling you 99.9% of the people I've ever been on undercover against they all plead guilty because the only thing they can really do the defense can really do is either claim entrapment or uh try to make you look like a bad person on the stand um so yeah so you you kind of infiltrate them in a way you're you're you're on the phone hey John you want to go hang out uh let's go grab a beer um and then you start making deals how does that work so that's what I was trying to get to I go off on tangents I apologize but um they they have to be predicated right like if I have if we have no evidence that you've ever dealt dope or nothing like I can't come up and start talking I mean that's we can start getting an entrapment issues there you know so hey you're broke and I'm offering you 30 grand to move this kilo I kind of trapped you there right so a lot of these uh members were already predicated on dope deals and stuff and arrest that they they had seen there um but really there wasn't a whole lot I had to wait for because as soon as I said I was from macallen Texas uh the president of the of that chapter said how much can you get a kilo for and can you bring me one and I'm like well that was fast yeah uh so as as time went on in that case uh you know they start finding out that I actually do some illegal stuff too you know and then and then they start seeing some things I do whether it's you know a truck loaded and it all started with them they were doing Insurance scams where they would report their motorcycle or car stolen sell it to me for a price they don't know what I'm getting for it in Mexico right and then uh I supposedly take the vehicles all down to Mexico and they get their insurance money and then it started like that but once once we started gaining trust with people next thing you know there's a legit car jacking which is a pretty serious crime yeah um and they need to get rid of that vehicle that was carjacked but it has um it wasn't OnStar back then I think it was called lowjack or something like that way back then right um and they're like hey this thing's got a tracker on it well don't worry about it you know we got this and and then you start gaining more trust and then there's like a there was a time where a Hell's Angel president uh was shot and killed uh in bridgport Connecticut and another Hell's Angel was with him and he got shot but he didn't didn't die and he was able to say hey it was a green pickup truck with Florida plates well we knew that Florida members were up you know and then I'm on the phone with them while the while the case team in Boston is running a wir tap which is not like TV you can't just call and say I want to tap this phone that is not how it works it's like 80 page affidavits it's got to get all kinds of levels of approval every 15 days you have to do updates it's only good for 30 days and you're always starting back over but they're running that and and we're calling and try to find out hey what can I find out and they're like hey you might want to stay out it's pretty hot right now I'm like if I come in can you hook me up with the vest and stuff because I don't want to be flying on a plane with that and and you just keep gaining more trust and eventually we led to the point to where uh again predicated but we led to a point to where we did a uh uh a drug protection we had 40 kilos of cocaine real 1,000 lbs of weed and and they they met other Undercovers and and uh cuz they the whole thing was is the the president especially wanted wanted a pipeline into uh a drug Supply his math and business skills were not that great because he's thinking if a if a kilo in in Deep South Texas cost $13,000 he thinks he can pay me $113,000 for that kilo and I'm like why do you think the kilos up here cost around 25 to 30 grand I go it's because you got to bring it from Texas you're not getting it for 13 right but uh that's what we did uh everybody wanted to take the case Rico if you would have done a RICO prosecution for that case after the two years that I was undercover and probably the three plus they worked on it um we could have wrapped in a lot more members from Florida all the way up but it just didn't it didn't go that way with the United States attorney's office yeah I remember the The Outlaws um there was an MMA fight uh in California that I was supposed to be at I ended up not not being there and one of the Outlaws I had met the guy in I think Ohio at another fight he was really nice guy fighter uh I liked him and uh he met my mom and he was very ni he he was very nice guy and um he was fighting in in in California and he was getting beat up and the Outlaws ended up uh starting a fight in the audience and like people were stabbed and it was like a it was a a big thing I'm I'm not sure if someone was killed but may have been it was been 20 years yeah but um that was my first like experience with like it can go violent real fast yeah like the great people I'm hanging out look I made a lot of friendships and they were I mean other than they they they didn't know they were making friends with an undercover FBI agent but it was pretty much me you know uh and there were some friendships that were pretty serious and deep you know during that two years but again you could be out um it reminds me of being out with some of the white supremacists that are just you know you're you're hanging out one minute um and the next minute bam you just matter matter of fact up in the Northeast there was a a gang called FSU stands for [ __ ] [ __ ] up all they did was go to bars and fight their whole thing was fighting a lot of them were Outlaws really yeah it was a crossover so you never know like you'd go they'd go to a a like a say it's a metal thing or like a you know some kind of Mosh Pit type thing yeah well they'd go in there and they'd send somebody small in or somebody that's not as intimidating start the fight and then when the other people start fight fighting that one I there's videos of it I mean it's just you don't even realize everybody on the wall is all FSU and they come in and just start smashing what's the point just to fight people I guess yeah that's that's crazy yeah um so yeah so like talk about the Friendship thing because you know if you're going undercover and I'm guessing you know you might like somebody like that's he's a good dude I he's doing all this bad [ __ ] but he's still a good dude yeah you know like what what is that like in your mind do you ever feel uh bad or anything like that yeah absolutely um you you yourself personally you've got to figure out how you're going to rationalize it in your mind so it doesn't have a negative impact on your psyche right but uh especially the outlaw case is probably the out of all the ones I've done and it's not like I've I've done there's let me say this right here right now um I have mentors I have peers I have people I've mentored there are guys and gals out there that have done way more than me um and then they've gone through more harrowing stuff than me um and they're not they're not on here for whatever reason so but I always want to pay respect and then you know just know it's a coming from a a humble Place sure but um tell me again oh say what's it like with the with the Friendship friendship yeah so on that twoe case there was one guy uh in particular and his name was Scott and he wasn't a patch member uh either but everybody in the Outlaws respected him and he had some working ties with Mafia stuff too but uh he and I just bonded I it was I mean we were like like they say man it's cliche right two P's in a pod it's just like man I'm like we would finish each other's sentences work out together drink together um I mean even got to the point to where you're not going to put him in the operations plan for the FBI but like people would be like hey is Scott going to be out there with you tonight and I'd go yeah and then everybody would go okay cool CU they knew he would fight for me and take a bullet for me and vice versa really um but you know uh this is this is in the book and and when I go teach the law enforcement stuff I I do a block surrounding this this time because what ended up happening is I I I found my threshold during over a three-year period I work myself too hard and well for me I met my threshold I I stopped taking care of myself and I crashed but during this case um he and I I mean really we bonded and it's it's again you see it I mean we get trained in it you should know better uh but I I was treated better by the Outlaws than the FBI a lot of times you know I had I don't know my first or second shoulder surgery at that time um the day of my surgery I had five M five messages from one of the case team members and and they knew I was in surgery they were just like hey when you get this you need to do this you need to do this you need to do this and I'm like what the f you know and uh what I'm getting on the next Tail cuz next tailes were big back then I get Hey brother I'm just checking on you how's things going how's your shoulder you know I love you brother I love you too you know and you're like it's not like I'm going to turn bad and go to the dark side against the FBI but yeah it's tough and then as the years went on in other cases um you know some I never really liked anybody but but I have to usually if especially it's going to go long term for me I have to bond with somebody sure you know and uh yeah I saw one I did I did one in Tennessee for a year and a half and that was a full-time one and uh probably about five or so years ago um Everybody played guilty on that I think we arested like 52 people um but somebody sent me a an obituary and it was the main guide infiltrated man and it you know you see it and it's like ah man it's just a somber feeling you know cuz yeah I mean you spend time with them but again you have to know um there's several things you can do but what you you can break this down you need somebody you need an accountability buddy we call them contact agents but you need somebody who's watching over you for the whole purpose of your psyche that's it they're not connected to the case because you'll get that stereotypical which has happened for many many moons where say it's a smaller department or whatever you got one person undercover their contact agent is also the case agent which is also the person that's going to benefit from this case so all they want is for you to succeed no matter what they're not looking out for your best interest and you being a type A we're not going to stop right I'm not going to stop same with a lot of your military friends and stuff and my friends same thing tactical guys we're going in I'm not stopping you know and and if you apply that that Warrior mentality type thinking if you apply that to everything in your life it can be detrimental so uh yeah you do you definitely make friendships and you just have to know you know where that line is and and maybe maybe let's just say for the outlaw thing we're getting ready to do that 40 kilo th000 lb deal and this guy who told me he has four daughters he almost went to jail um looking at serious time he got out of it he's not doing this stuff anymore wanted in and maybe you know it's not like I'm saying hey I'm FBI or I'm saying you don't do this you're not doing this no but because that would be wrong I'd be over stepping my bounds but I can look at you and go why are you doing this right I mean why are you you mean you told me you got four daughters what are you doing I mean you don't have to do this for our friendship that's I'm telling you no I'm in okay gotcha did you ever uh have somebody that wanted to do something and you said hey you shouldn't do this and they they didn't do it they ever take your advice well I've slowed people down MH I mean that was that was the white suprem one of the white supremacy cases I they they ready to go kill somebody like that week if if we wouldn't have found out that they were planning a murder plot I literally would have showed up to a campsite and I would have found out right then hey leave your cell phones we're all getting ready to go murder somebody which is going to be like okay I'm not leaving my cell phone do we blow the whole case right now how do we do this is the team coming in so yeah um but I'm trying to think like on a on a personal level yeah I find it very interesting like the personal level because you know uh to me human connection is the most important thing and whether someone's a you know there's a lot of uh reasonably good people that are doing bad things you know and so I could imagine probably the hardest part for me would be caring for someone and knowing that you know you're undercover you've got your job they're doing something very illegal and they need to be held responsible but also like wanting the best for them overall too so that's got to be a hard thing for the psyche love a success story and and as a law enforcement officer pretty much my entire career when I sit somebody down at the table I tell them uh with the exception of maybe a pedophile but I tell them i' go hey I'm not saying I think you're a bad person MH I'm not saying I just agree with what you did what I'm saying is is you're an adult and you made a choice to commit a crime and now you're caught so let's just start here I do that all the time and I'll tell people I'm like man matter of fact there's one now that I'm retired that I helped get arrested who was a white supremacist he's now flipped um I ended I made sure it was okay with the assistant United States Attorney and the United States attorney's office but I did a letter uh on behalf of his um character nice for his sentencing and cuz I said man as long as you're doing the right thing I'll do anything I can to help you you know and there's very few things in law enforcement career that I've loved more than a success story from somebody learning from their mistakes turning their life around for the better yeah you know um and now this one particular guy he was worried about having a felony on his record trying to get a job I said well who better to be your your you know you know your uh uh somebody that they can call than the guy who helped get you arrested right you know yeah if you're doing the right thing um but yeah and I'll tell them I go look look at me I'm not a I am not a cookie cutter FBI guy right I'm then I had tattoos when I came in Hoover would have never hired me you know but uh and and I committed all kinds of crimes growing up I just didn't get caught right there was a funny moment at the sheriff's office when I got hired at they had this sheet and it basically said something to the effect of circle any of the following crimes you've ever committed even if you never were caught well I was just being honest I mean I circled public indecency DUI malicious damage Petty lony I mean I was circling all kinds of stuff and they were like are you serious and I'd go yeah and I told them all the stories and I don't know maybe they thought I was it was good that I was being honest but you know they let you through so yeah so I can connect with again and you know you look at your family and this that and the other it's yeah I I I try to unless it's time to be unrespected you know like if they if they've done something like that but I try to be uh respectful and you know going through this book writing process I never coined it this way but my friends who are my literary agents um they termed it this way they said you know you refuse to dehumanize people and I was like you know what that's a great way to say it because say you're writing a book and then the cowriter is like these stupid idiots and blah blah blah and I read it and I go no take the stupid idiot part out and they're like what I mean what they're and I go they're people too yeah that's somebody's dad somebody's son somebody's husband whatever you know yeah absolutely yeah um yeah it's a really interesting part cuz I don't think people think about the mental impact it has for the undercover agents that you know your people too you have this human connection that goes beyond a criminal and a uh a cop it's more of human being to human being and U it's got to play a you know play with your emotions in a way the more time you spend with them and and living with them and yes yeah street level stuff I'm going to pop into your house some going make a buy and leave I don't have to get super connected with you three buys were're hitting you with the search warrant that kind of thing but yeah longterm or I mean look a lot of your cases a lot of your Undercovers you I mean it might take six months just to get everything set up to start getting to know people and some of your cases you we have enough predication to open the case it goes through legal review and everything but we're not positive especially on the white supremacy realm right or even the militia realm because it's it's your first amendment right there could be thousands and thousands people on this telegram you know wire whatever gab what they can spew all kinds of hate they can say I hate every black person I hate every brown person I want them all to die that's not illegal M so we might be infiltrating them because there's been a lot of rhetoric and and people are saying hey you need to look at this but I might be in there for four months and find out look this just talk they're not going to go do anything um but that whole time you're building relationships right yeah so yeah it can it can be it can be very tricky um I've just always stayed close to who I am because the way I was taught um and I agree with this is if you pretend to be something completely opposite of what you are for a long period of time one or two things is going to happen you're either going to become it or you're going to slip up and get caught so I've always just tried to be close to who I am which is why I probably never got called for a Wall Street gig or the you know if there is there there five star hotels and more I don't know I was always in the backwoods that's awesome you got your book uh coming out uh in March of 2025 pel horse what are some of the stories uh just talk about the vocation what's it about and and what was the goal of it uh well uh what is the goal of it I guess well the goal first of all I never wanted to do it um all I ever wanted to do when I retired cuz uh and you've met some mutual friends it started with Glenn because I've been around wrestling my whole life um I've known the head of security for WWE I take church kids and stuff backstage stuff like that but when Glenn was running for mayor um I met John T and then after that John T gets Richie and they start going in and you know how it is it's like hey man you got some good stories let's let me introduce you this person and then by the time the Rolling Stones article came out um we started getting hit by everybody um you know all the big you know companies Leonardo DiCaprio um Scarlett Johansson um you know amlin entertainment Steve Spielberg all this stuff and that's when the uh literary agents were calling Rolling Stone and I'm like I don't want to do a book I mean I just the way I saw it is like I don't want to go around every town and you know and and they convinced me um look man you're this is your legacy for your family um you know you can tell your stories and the way I saw it is I was like look I'm basically doing what I already do I go around and I teach and I speak it at conferences and and wherever uh you know even through the FBI um over the attrition you Tau in front of thousands upon thousands of officers hundreds and hundreds of civilians cuz we have Outreach Citizens Academy but when I got on the phone with them it was basically I'm just going to keep telling my stories and and there's going to be a code writer and we're going to put it to paper and it turns out that they' also done some books of some some of my mentors who were uh retired FBI and had bestseller books and stuff so I called them to make sure and uh we decided to do it um but as we're doing it I'm just telling my stories right and then it kind you start you start I'll tell you what happened for me I w't say you start but what happened for me is my eyes just started getting more open like instead of being Brash and going somebody coming up who may not understand our side of the world and they ask some questions that I may think are completely idiotic you know like you know with our military friends and and and you know the Tactical people were like what you have no idea what Evil's out here like Mexico you mentioned it's a different value of life people just don't understand that right um and uh but the old Scott would have been like you're an idiot you need to go back home and live in your bubble and be happy we're out here on the wall not to get all you know Jack Nicholson on you but be happy we're out here then I started realizing I didn't really do a whole lot of good and you get involved with these huge groups like eradicate hate and I'm like well let me just listen and as we said before how do you bring people back towards the middle right you know this whole in my opinion if you're far right you're not smart if you're far left you're not smart it's just too much hate yes uh let's bring everybody back together you know again like I made the joke like hey uh it's okay for you to like something I don't it's okay for me to like something you don't we still be friends right do you eat do you like food me too so let's start there we got something in common um but the book what it covers is uh it's just like chapter one's a synopsis of me growing up you know some funny stories about my family in high school and looking back it was really the first undercover I ever did but I didn't realize I was undercover at the time you know yes not in law enforcement but in high school right uh trying to find out who had damaged theice uh the vice principal's house and spaint spray painted it with a bunch of you know uh racist stuff and whatnot and then chapter two is me as a cop becoming a vice narcotics investigator some pretty scary things street level deals three and on is all FBI undercover um because what I didn't like I've read a lot of books from retired agents in Undercover and if you're saying that the book's undercover and it's about undercover and it takes you to chapter 10 to start talking about undercover well what are we doing right or in the middle I throw in one of my case agents cuz I we got I've been blessed to be on some big cases or running some big investigations that had great impacts uh in there uh and wherever we were at but as this as as we started getting more and more into the book I was getting asked what you just asked me what is the goal of the book what are you trying to say with the book and I'm like I'll just tell my stories and then uh after again getting involved with so many people that eradicate hate and these wonderful people who have gone through some horrific things um from extremism um lost family members uh the Tree of Life Massacre you know the Buffalo Massacre um all these things it just started hitting me um I'm like man this is cliche and does it make it sound like I'm too soft cuz no I'm not too soft but it's like man look stop hating yeah hate takes so much energy yes and it's not rewarding hardly ever if if ever you know and and it takes a lot of energy and it just drains you but if you spread love it's almost instantly gratifying yeah and and I'm we're going to put it in the book but there was a a quote from Martin Luther King that just ran true and I'll probably butchered a little bit because I don't have it in front of me but uh um it says something to the effect of hate cannot drive D out hate only love can do that um Darkness cannot drive out Darkness only light can do that I think I said it backwards but that's that's that's kind of the message and you're like okay yeah let's just bring people you you get on these phones and I teach a whole block on radicalization of teens online now I have personal experience because I've infiltrated the white supremacy side and the militia side but I have peers or mentors or people I've mentored that have infiltrated the radical Muslim side or whatever it's all they get on and you start diving into those rabbit holes on your phone late at night and uh I think as humans most of us want to belong to something you want to feel you have that need to belong um and it goes back to the 80s gangs or Cults they're going to find somebody maybe from a broken home uh you don't have a lot of friends maybe you're a social outcast maybe you can't find a partner maybe you've been bullied those were the ones I kept running into I know there's all kinds of other avenues but those are the ones I kept running into that would find this extremist hate and now they can bond with something else I mean look at what um uh it's escaping my mind right now what they're incels have you have you heard of those what that so incels are basically white supremacist but incel is short for involuntarily celibate so here's the belief system uh the shooter at the Aurora uh movie theater he was an inel okay they were really concerned about a lot of people were concerned about the movie The Joker because uh with walking Phoenix because that character itself painted what kind of like an incel is so they they cannot score basically to break it down simple terms they can't hook up yeah um that's that they they physically can but they choose not to well they try to get a girlfriend and nobody wants to date them I see right or a partner but it's usually girlfriend and then they take that and turn the hate even more so now they're involuntarily celibate not voluntary involuntarily celibate so now they hate the women and they push this ideology to where well we're going to kill all women which still leaves you not hooking up I don't I'm like how don't you there's a group of people that believe that yeah yeah incels in I'm sorry incels wow and then some of the groups I was in that were white supremacy a couple of them weren't too far from being inels what what is what what are the conversations with them like I mean they're just mad and angry and just deeped hate obviously for yeah uh they talk rape a lot they like they want to rape people well they can't they can't they can't yeah have sexual intercourse any other way that's why I'm trying to not to just say get laid it's okay they can't get laid right so they talk R so they they have this hate for women yeah and it's all the women's fault yep um and they don't look at themselves and say oh well maybe you know if I were my fault yeah it's it's all it's it's a victim they're playing a victim yeah a professional victim y so do you just want to beat them up all the time well I would if I saw them in public I'd be like Scot the old Scott yes yeah 15 20 years ago we're spreading love now but I'm just saying might want to beat these guys up I want I want to I want to spread love in the way of punching and slapping that's right uh I want to slap the love into you right uh but yeah so you know one of the white supremacy groups I was in which was the the main thing for the uh article which is also the book ends of the book right the book The reason it's called and again I don't get to pick everything we put it on the table you've got these brainiacs that look at algorithms and all for for titles but code name pale horse pel horse was my moniker and the violent white supremacy group called the Bas okay um so it kind of starts with that because that's what really the Rolling Stones article was about it starts with that it did get a lot of coverage all over the world because there was members from all over the world and it starts with that and then it ends with that kind of like how did I become Pale Horse and that's the Journey of the book and and and so the base um how did how did that it start that you infiltrated you know them so that would be uh kind of a kind of a typical kind of a typical deal in law enforcement especially on the domestic terrorism side right um like I told you earlier there can be thousands of people in there spewing hate how do we watch them all how do we know which one's going to go and do a lone wolf thing we don't nobody has a crystal ball so we might proactively go after them and we were getting reports from overseas or working or World working part saying hey we've got these people over here that are members of the base looks like they're kind of in the United States and uh I started I the team picked me I mean I was kind of on the team too but I I'm willing to do it um uh no better than anybody else you know there's plenty of people in that chain that could have done it but we all know each other right because it's like if you have uh not to get off on a tangent but let's just say in the FBI you've got 600 certified undercover agents well when you ask how many of you have been the primary Undercover on an undercover operation that dwindles down and say how many have you been the primary Undercover on more than one but less than five it dwindles down even more when you say over five or over 10 you're down to like a core probably 30 to 50 people and we all know each other so I would get a lead on something or a white supremacy case or something and I'd be like hey I can't do it I just had my text group hey no need to respond if you're not available we got a hot one Colorado Springs blah blah blah if you're available hit me back and then we would work at that way so with that one I went on they were posting all over gab which was an app um and it's kind of like a bunch of posting pictures and stuff kind of Facebook is but not really um because it had different groups I mean they literally had 14 words as a group well that's the 14 words that is Renown in white supremacy it's David Lane coined it I'll butcher it but it's something that we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children kind of thing um that's the 14 words and then they had whites only a group like that so you go in you can see them posting about training and stuff and I started responding um next thing you know I start getting emails and I'm being ask all kinds of questions and I'm answering those questions and after about a week of back and forth questions I was told to download the app wire um let them know when I got it uh set up the account and then in and wire you can do um voice to voice as well as posting and stuff so something like a Snapchat kind of thing and uh I I went through about an hour and 15 minute interview with like a five person panel asking me and I could hear some of were young you know and I could hear some of them were older um and and I passed I passed their uh their their sniff test and 24 hours later they said hey we'd like to have you in the base if you'd be willing to be a member and I said absolutely and then they said where are you located I said East Tennessee and they said um uh we'll get uh a leader of the sale closest to you you'll be contacted they set themselves up um I never was able to confirm um if the lead purposely cuz he denied it but Al-Qaeda mhm in English is the base interesting and they setel up just like Al-Qaeda they wanted three to five man celles c l LS with my redneck accent I don't know if it's coming across different but Sals all over the world for that call and what they called bugaloo which would be D-Day which would mean the collapse of society and the big thing with this group is and again I'll go out and speak and and and teach uh on white nationalism from the KKK days all the way up to right now and this is not the KKK this is this is not burning crosses and you go and do a March this is they are accelerationists um James Mason is a longtime white supremacist he created Adam wafin division he did the book called Siege and a lot of it is guilla Warfare type tactics a lot of accelerationism and the base was huge into Siege culture is what they called it so what it essentially it means this they don't believe that there's a political solution to save the white race they believe that Society is either going to collapse on its own or from man-made events and they want to speed it up H like one of the members who's now serving a lot more time in jail than he was because he did some heinous things once he got in jail after we arrested him um me picked up a lot more charges in years uh he told me he goes hey I voted for Hillary Clinton now here I am with a bunch of white supremacist and I'm like why he said because if she came in he said uh they would start taking money away from police the military wouldn't get as much there's going to be rights there's going to be in his mind if he if he voted her in it would speed up the collapse of society H and so they're they're worried about saving the white race that's their yes what's the like what's their philosophy on that it always ends up excuse me I'm going to make that chair squeak it always ends up or I just most of the time it ends up in in them having their own ethn state does that mean the entire white United States is white no there were groups uh the group I was in the CES I was in was looking at setting up um a compound basically an ethnostate in the Appalachian Mountains we had a group in the base that were looking at the upper peninsula in Michigan we had a group that were looking at the Pacific Northwest um but essentially you would be it would be a compound and you would have your own schooling and training and and I I don't know there's not a lot of I guess you could say forethought and afterthought right there's not a lot because you know huge neonazi huge Hitler um which always kind of amused me because I've I've done a lot of stuff around the far-left and and socialist and stuff like that but I've had good friends that they're they're more set to do those Undercovers while I'm over here with the other people doing what I do or we did but if you start up here and you've you got far left socialist and you got far right socialist and they go down they meet right back that they want the same thing they want everything paid for they want this that and the other and and I would ask them you know we'd be on a 5 hour hike or something I'd be like so we're neo-nazis yeah yes we're so we're accelerationist yes so who's going to be Hitler and they all kind of look at each other and I said well only one of us can be Hitler they can't be like five Hitlers who's going to be the leader when all this baby goes down you know so it's just things to think about but it's for me it's amusing cuz I'm kind of like I'm trying to you know point out to yeah point out to them you know I mean some of these kids believe that the Earth is uh flat some of these kids believe that the Earth is concave they believe hugely in a hollow Earth and that Hitler's still alive living in the middle of the Earth with agarthans and there were some other name with like giant people and I started you know we'd be drinking and I'd kind of just poke at them I'd be like really 15t tall they're like yeah and I go well what are they waiting on why are they still down there right you know um yeah I know right but to tie it back into incels um later on in the undercover investigation I'm like you know I know ethnos State I know we're going to set up our own thing we're going to run this baby it's going to be ours the white race is going to Prevail we always do um kind of thing I'm doing my doing my part and I said but you know I haven't heard any of you guys talking about how we're going to procreate I said cuz I got a lady but she's not for share M and they started giggling a little bit and we're talking 20 year olds and older are like well we're just going to rape the women and I'm like okay and I look at the one dude who's got a girlfriend and we kind of smirk at each other and I said they go what's the funny I said you guys don't have a lot of experience with women do you yeah and they're like what do you mean and I go I'm saying it might work for a little while but at some point you're going to have to go to sleep and you might wake up missing parts you went to bed with you know I said I'd give that whole rape thing another thought you know uh um but again they've probably D do Dove down some deep dark hole and black metal and whatever and a lot of Satanism um not knock and Satanist it's not my belief system but um a lot of that you start diving into those accelerationist groups usually somewhere in there there will be somebody that's messing around with order of nine angles which is another huge white supremacy group but really satanic really yeah so I mean you know you hear a lot of different things uh in the media um you know to me and you can correct me here uh I feel like they throw the title white supremacist around a lot when a lot of it isn't um you know how many actual white supremacists do you think there are in the United States and do you agree that they actually throw the title around uh sometimes but it's not oh I believe they throw it around way too much but that kind of goes with this whole cancel culture and W culture stuff you know it's hard to disagree with anybody on anything now without being I mean or just not even disagree and just having your own opinion you know some free thinking uh right that you talk about right free thinking and then all of a sudden everybody's like well you hey back off man um but yeah I think it's thrown around a lot but I mean you know if if you're a certain media outlet and you are catering or or bantering for the type of people you want watching you you're going to say certain things and same on the opposite side right um but let's take for instance January 6 I can't tell you how many calls I've been on not just how many times I've heard it on on social media or or mainstream Media or just TV in General on calls where I'm being uh like they're pitching us right hey we would like to do a TV show a documentary kind of thing and and they're just saying it was all white supremacist on January 6 I go no no no no that was militia that's anti-government that's that's 3centers and again let me let me paint a picture for you 3centers aren't illegal 3ers like there are militia groups is in the Constitution and where we're at and Tennessee man you see 3er stickers everywhere you see the Gadson flag on license plates doesn't mean they're white supremacist it doesn't mean they're they're super anti-government just a lot of times it just means they love the Constitution and they love their guns and usually they love God MH um and they's not they're not saying they're going to do anything unless cops stop arresting people unless you have to take care of your own unless somebody comes and try to take their guns yeah you know um I think gets thrown around and get bit but it's it's due to lack of knowledge cuz every time I've been on a call whether it's a it's a far-left person or whatever they just don't know right so you spread that knowledge it's just like me talking to somebody and them saying and by the way this was at eradicate hate with a very high highly successful well-known defense attorney and they said well I just don't understand why they could have just shot that guy in the leg and I looked at her and I said I've got a I said in all your years you do you not know what the force continu is for deadly force and they're like no what are you talking about and I'm like well you don't you don't just pull a weapon out and point it at somebody unless it's a deadly force situation and I had to explain that to them and I did it in a nice way and then they everybody walked away from the table like wow that's just spreading what you know and then kind of bringing people to the table no I hear what you're saying but in my experience this yes and and they don't know I said we can't shoot to MIM that's a lawsuit you can't this is not the Wild Wild West right you know you resist this much then the office can use this much you use this much resistance then they can use this much if you get to the top of that triangle whether they I've heard they've changing it now and it's not a force continuum it's just a whatever but it's still the same thing yeah if I'm pulling my gun out and and you know I'm easing the slack off the trigger I'm giving you commands it's a deadly force situation yeah how much you think you know right now is just people not having knowledge like that for instance um like putting labels I mean you know you look at everything we've been through the last four years years with Co and those type of things and through that if you didn't put a black box on Instagram or whatever you are a racist you don't support black lives matters you're a racist if you don't support biological men competing in female sports you're a transphobe you know it's either this or that if you think this way you're a trump supporter you think that way you're a Biden supporter and I I had a a post a few years ago where uh in the comments I I got called a leftwing libtard and a right-wing conspirac conspiracy theorist I'm doing pretty good cuz you're in the middle yeah there we go you're Aver out yeah yeah but um you know talk a little about that because we are seeing right now in society hearing that there's groups that are like ready for it to all in and you know swoop in with their guns and stuff uh it seems like if we don't get a grip and have some common sense we could be headed that way absolutely I I I truly believe that now I've been retired since June of 21 um I still continued working with the bureau pretty extensively for six months after that so let's just say up until 2022 um I don't have my thumb on the pulse anymore with the exception of I'm involved with groups like eradicate hate or I go and teach at the Tennessee gang conference or for roci I or or these big organizations where I'm interacting with people who are on the ground right now still working this stuff um but yeah that's that's my thought process if we don't come back towards the middle and we don't get some common sense I will say that I I won't say that it will happen but I'll say that the odds for it and the um the ability for it to happen is pretty strong you have a you have a lot of people who are quiet and they are well stocked on weapons now there's some that train every weekend now is that who you want making a tactical entry not from what I've seen from most of them but it's still a person with a gun and like I've said to in interviews and and and wherever um you there's not a bowler plate pitcher right you can't look at a picture and go oh that's a white supremacist right oh and I usually tell people I go if I would have shown you a picture and and these are usually jacked up you know type A are like oh that person's a wimp you're going to scare them I go oh no no dead is dead let's get that straight right if I would have shown you a picture of the Colin Bine kids before Colin Bine happened what would you have said if you looked at their picture what would you have said of a picture of of I'm not going to say their names I I say them when I'm teaching Undercover because I have to explain what I'm doing but I don't want to you know in the Tactical world and and when we're out teaching active shooter stuff we don't want to mention the murderer's name cuz that's what they want so but let's just say the Charleston Church shooter if I would have shown you a picture of that kid what would you have said bold haircut tank top skinny holding a 45 the kid from Aurora orange yellow hair and this that and the other but man they still have the ability to kill yeah so you just got to be careful yeah and then I mean there's so many tangents we could go off on like mental health and this that and the other um but for me and I've said this at the eradicate hate conference and I'm like I am not a be allend all and I hope I don't come off that way um I'm just telling you my experiences but for me in 28 years of law enforcement and if I look Beyond before and after it all starts at home mhm it all starts at home well you think about you know in in all communi really like when there's not a father in the home yeah you know you have a lot more problems um uh that is actually one of the main things right now you know you look at one of the reasons I didn't support black lives matter is because if you looked at their website um you could tell it was a communist organization yeah it said that they wanted to do away with a nuclear family it's like well why would you want to separate the family we see you know what happened um uh when we brought in welfarism in the 1960s uh what happened in the black community separated them from uh you basically gave incentives to not keep a family um separate the kids from their fathers and you know now I forget the statistics but it's a you know very high fatherless rate in those homes and that to me is a number one cause actually of of a lot of those issues in those communities um why do you think though like whoever's pushing these buttons uh they have to know that not bringing family P together is a good thing I am I've heard you say this about yourself too I am not a conspiracy theorist um but it is a fact that our adversaries overseas China Russia they do put money into the states um and not just on white supremacy side they do it on the far left side and they pump money because they want chaos they want they want America yeah you know death to America they want all this stuff uh I think there's some of that um but I can also counter and tell you that some of the people I've arrested uh the father's there but they put blinders on I thought it was just a phase let me get this straight your 21y old son doesn't have a job he doesn't have a car uh but he's got an Arsenal in his closet he's wearing plate carriers to the equivalent of what the FBI wears um cry Precision expensive stuff uh and he's got own men coming to your 100 Acre Farm and training all the time wearing flectar camo because it's Germans pattern uh there's a there's a skull on his table with swastikas and runes nothing against the runes but you know a lot of your white supremacy groups are moving into that paganism movement I've got plenty of friends that are pagans and they're pissed about it because it's like this is this is not what we are but right right next to the skull is Siege the book from James Mason and on on the other side is Myan comp from Hitler and you're telling me that you thought it was a phase yeah you know oh you put those thoughts in his head actually sir I did not right I was just as shocked as anybody else when your son said we were going to go murder people yeah I thought we were going to put up Flyers yeah well it's it's wild it's it's not just obviously the the father's not being the home it is turning a blind eye but um you know it does seem like there is some type of of of movement that is not open in public but it is open because we can see it happening yeah like we can see right now the division that's being caused we can see right now critical thinking and putting people in boxes and saying no you can't think in the middle as you're talking about you either going to be right here or right here you know if you agree with this you've got to be a Biden supporter if you agree with this you got to be a horrible person you know it's like this just throwing these stones and and we've lost our Humanity through it it seems yeah I I'm a firm believer in that I we were concerned about our kids you know going to school and and uh you know when I went to school uh the teacher's job was to present the facts and then the the students in the room might say well I I lean more to pro-life well I lean more to you know pro-choice well let's have a debate but we're not like burning stuff down you know or or you here's the facts not not me telling you the way I want you to know it and then skewing people that would be I would have an issue with that if somebody was doing that with with my family members yeah but it's just it's just division it's just Division and I'll tell you I'm a Believer right that's me I'm not trying to preach to anybody but uh you want to know how I made it through a lot of Undercovers my faith and even when I didn't have my faith my wife did you know um and I there are stories that I can tell you that I mean you say what you want but I know and she knows without a shadow of a doubt it was God right so whatever you believe in um but it's just evil is what's happening yes I don't care which belief system you got maybe you don't think there's such a thing as evil I'm pretty I I usually I have friends who are agnostic I have friends who are atheist and uh and it's like you know they don't believe there's a guy okay I got that okay do you believe in evil oh yeah I believe in evil absolutely so it EVs and flows but this whole division of oh I hate you I hate you it's me go back and watch some Bugs Bunny cartoon from back in the day not too far back cuz they not politically correct at all but you know like ' 80s 90s it's just somebody whispering in this ear did you hear what he just said about you are you going to take that and that same person goes the other side and goes guess what they're saying over there yeah and you're like and then the next thing you know is it's fistic cuffs right you know no it is it is to me uh good versus evil yeah you know I mean it's it's obvious that there are evil forces trying to push you know this agenda because you know they make take it to where if you speak out you're the bad guy for saying it and if you if you go against what is I'm going to call it po pop culture right now which I think a lot of just pop culture oh this this is the way you're supposed to think about this and if you if you don't put your Ukraine flag up there you're this and it's like I don't agree with any of it actually I I don't I'm not even thinking in those those ways but um you know I really do I think that it's it's good versus evil and you know that's why I pray a lot you know like it's a it's a uh multiple time a day you know type thing hey what do I do here I'm just going to trust you know but when I feel the evil um I I notice it I recognize it yeah you know and I think that we're seeing a lot of that right now in society so uh to kind of parlay off of that um you know generally uh historically what I've found and what I remember growing up kids and again this is before all the video games and stuff like they have today but before they're desensitized they are very sensitive and they can pick up on evil pretty damn quick it's the adults who can't because we've been so desensitized we've seen so many things right um and like you said if everybody says this is the norm now um and that's all you hear every day from every Outlet you go to yeah I can see you believe in it for sure you don't know there's anything different exactly you know um it could be somebody me from my world they believe in the life of crime because this this and this and they think they can do whatever they want and my argument always was one of my arguments was always don't hate me for being a law enforcement officer I'm a peace officer but my job is to enforce the law if you don't like the laws then just get them changed go change but but since I've retired there's plenty of places in the United States where they're just picking and choosing what laws they want to enforce and not yeah and depending on who the person is and I'm like well that's not that took away my whole argument cuz I don't even know what to tell you from that yeah that's that's wild the weaponization of the Department of Justice it's pretty obvious I mean you're seeing these political cases it's hard it's hard not to argue against well yeah it's just well so um my girlfriend's dad was us attorney for 20 plus years okay and um we talk about it he's like yeah it's obvious right now it has been weaponized and um he's a pretty middle middle of the road guy but um but even when you're doing your job doesn't matter whether you're left or right when you're doing your job as a law enforcement officer or as a US attorney or as a judge you have to be unbiased right I got to be I've set across the table for many of of child molesters my personal beliefs wouldn't do too well right but I'm trying to do a job and I'm unbiased and yes I can do that people may not believe you can do that but I can't no I mean if that's if that's what your job is you got to get in get the mindset you're in it for the right reasons you understand the importance of uh not having a bias and you know not and and that is what's so weird you know it seems to be in the media uh you know across the board within the justice department you know I think Trump ignited so much fear in people and I I like to say Trump likes to cut and poor salt in wounds and I never saw him deescalate deescalate or no diffuse anything and you know I liked a lot of his policies but and I have a lot of friends that are Trump supporters I wasn't one yeah and I said when he got elected that the left isn't going to be able to handle his rhetoric and it's going to cause ultimate civil unrest and you can ask my parents or my business Partners uh the first 3 years I'm like there's no way they're going to let him be president there's no way they're going to be let uh let him be president again they're going to do something to to get them out the economy is going to crash they something's going to happen crazy event and then in January 2020 I was like well guys I guess I was wrong you know I shouldn't be so and then you know March uh covid hits and you know I have some the almighty evil I mean what are the odds think about this what are the odds that a once in a 200e virus maybe even longer comes around during the most contentious presidential race in the history of our country probably one of them at least at least In Our Lifetime yeah what are the odds of that I I don't think like it would be astronomical if you were actually run it so that just happened to happen in March of 2020 when Trump were was going to be reelected the economy was going great things were going great uh you know overall except that the other side was so mad actually the world not just the other side Trump just smacked them all and cut them all pour salt in all the wounds what are the odds do you think that that just happened it's uh it's it's definitely a good argument you know I it's uh and and they've gone after him pretty hard but again he would never in my opinion wouldn't be quiet he the nanny nanny boo boo stuff I'm like come on you can see how that and like that was the part that was but he's a billionaire he is and I've been backstage with v McMahon many many times yeah and that's not a character that is him no I believe it it's just they make decisions and they make them that's it yeah it's just that you have to see that ultimately it's going to end you know it's going to end badly um well I'll picture this too say you're Entourage or your teams around you and let's just say you go out there and you do this nanny nanny boo boo stuff and you go backstage and it's the other old white guys going high five you spanked them you spanked them but if you're like me and a lot of my peers watching it we're going come on what did you you know right what what are we doing what are we doing and and again it's still csing division one way or another yeah well that and that's I mean the country was I'm going to say well compared to now it was just a little bit divided uh during Obama it wasn't that bad like and your militia started Rising back up during those eight years though because they were worried about gun loss okay that's where because they died out but that that eight years and it's not it's not aama's fault it's just you know what I'm saying that that belief system of they're coming to get our guns they're coming CU they actually said it on multiple occasions you know and then if you remember we're cracking down on guns and the next day the gun sales go through the roof because everybody's like buy them up boys you know girls I kind of like that you know um as far as we have a second amendment to protect us against the tyrannical government so the the fact that people are arming themselves as a right of a citizen I like that idea you take it too far obviously there's issues with that but you know so so yeah they were they were worried but then Trump got in office and he went hard in the paint and I mean I I appreciate how courageous he was in the sense that he stood up to what I consider some very evil people and things yeah I appreciated that part at the same time I wondered if it you know is it just courage or can he not see that you got to show show a little humbleness and real if you really want what's best for the world you want best for Humanity you want best for our kids and our grandchildren you know sometimes you'll say sorry sometimes you'll say I made a mistake yep sometimes you'll put put a hand out and say you know what it's yeah and it was you know he just pushed so hard I saw it coming the entire time like the guy there's no way I loved a lot of his policies there's no way that they're going to allow this guy to be in again and then you know then the co thing happened this time around like and and this is where it's weird I'm still not I wouldn't consider myself a Trump supporter uh I'll probably vote for him this time but I wouldn't consider myself a big supporter and but I can't I can't deny that they're going after him so hard on a bunch of bogus things yeah I mean the the rape trial uh that was you know that's a civil case but that's that was awful uh you know he didn't even uh the lady didn't even remember uh what year it happened yeah and but she's going to remember like give me a break I mean it was just you saw her on TV talking about you know well the double standards are the big issue for me I mean if you're going to do it let's do it fair across the board it goes back to the old remember the old story if you don't have enough candy for everybody in the room you can't have a piece right you know so just do it fair across the board yeah if the FBI says no beards that means nobody has a beard right period yeah you know but yeah that's U we're in a we're in a weird spot you know and I'm all I'm trying to do is you know um spread the knowledge that I've learned forward and I still learn yeah how do we bring people together though in this time do you think there's more people out there kind of like with our thought process uh process of it uh that realize that we need to come together like I think we're seeing more of it now simply because a lot of the left party has gone so far left yeah can you imagine if the right party went that far right it would be quite Supremacy is what it would be yeah you know what I mean so it people who are still left or people who are still right and I don't even want to call them moderate they're just not like way the hell off the page sure they're saying I mean like Bill Maher look at him how many when when Fox News is quoting Bill Mah all the time you're like he's like I'm still a Democrat right I've just stayed where I'm at so I think a lot of people are starting to see and and again uh if you're looking at election stuff and I'm no guru by any means but what's being talked about at the kitchen table bro I mean a a 6 o riby is 25 bucks but I can get the pork shoulder for 23 I guess I'm eating pork this week I retired at 50 because we get a pension but we have what's called a Thrift Savings Plan which is basically a 401k M um for me being a former cop not coming from a ton of money um having to earn everything you know um that was a sick amount of money that's why I retired at 50 it's nowhere near what it was yeah it's down 25% just in 3 years yeah and I'm like you know and shame on me for not catching the stocks going down but you know I take two weeks off I come back and it's in half so um we'll we'll see but for me uh with what I know and I know there's all kinds of things because again with eradicate hate and groups like that life after hate they've got they've got all kinds of Academia they've got this they've got other avenues but for me it's just about talking and not everybody can do that but let's just sit down and have a conversation let's just start there yeah I mean it's uh I was saying earlier that uh had one of our scientists here in Nashville a couple days ago and he's got uh say different political views on on how to do things uh than I do but I I love talking to him because he's really smart he's got uh two phds protein crystallography and theoretical chemistry yeah I don't know what those things are right yeah uh you know he's he's he's a uh older man uh let say about you know 75 and had a great great career and so but we can sit and talk you know I'm giving him my side on on this he's giving and I you know I learned a little bit I'm like oh this is good I I love learning I wouldn't have learned if we weren't able to have that conversation didn't have the you these days respect for each other to be able to have that uh conversation with different ideas but it seems like we're afraid of uh ideas that aren't popular yeah and and on that note I can waffle like quick I can come in and put it put it on the table and go this is what it is and this is why I believe this and then somebody like you said different view but we can talk they explain something I go H well based on that new knowledge I have I completely revers what I just said and that's that's that's how I've always worked I mean let's put everything on the table let's start poking holes at it like develop a case strategy let's come up with you let's pick the one that's the best it does you know work with people and this is what I used to say as a trainer um cuz we went through we went through uh these phases right and uh raising kids and I think every parent wants their kids to do better than them even if they had it good um but then we got to this whole thing where you had like um you know helicopter parenting fine that's what you want to do but if you're a trainer or a football coach or something like that a fighting coach or you know you're training firearms and tactics in in the FBI or at your Police Department you start seeing these uh the the culture change and then you see everybody gets a trophy and then you see nobody is really failing and then when they become an adult and they fail for the first time oh it's almost a nervous breakdown or the other side that we would see is I would just ask people when they would come into the bureau and I wasn't trying to be a complete ass or anything but I'm joke joking a little bit but I'd say have you ever played a team sport I break it down even more have you ever had to work with somebody else to accomplish a goal that's my first question my second question is have you ever failed at something cuz I started seeing in my personal opinion those were some huge issues yeah um and and a lot of times in these last several years the answer is no to both they haven't failed never failed because they've always been given everything oh my gosh right and I'm like I was on a football team that lost every game yeah oh and 10 I mean you think about it like every week that one guy's going it's a new week we're 0 and0 no we're not we're 0 and seven we suck that's kind like the idea of everybody gets a trophy yes you know and I mean you know from Sports I mean in competition you're going to lose absolutely I mean there is nobody that's undefeated forever and uh I wrestled in uh Junior High in high school and uh for a half a semeer for a semester in college and uh I lost a lot man yeah I mean I think my senior year I was somewhere around if I were I might be off here but like 60 and 13 you know that's 13 losses that's pretty good record but that's 13 losses that year you know the year before that was not was wor you actually won some after you lost right that's right building that for intestinal fortitude yeah but you got to learn how to lose and not what what it success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm yeah and uh I feel like we're we're losing that in society now you know you're talking about that incel thing I had heard of that I I didn't know what it was but now it was kind of like as we're talking I'm remembering um you know I see like the uh this movement right now to make men uh uh more masculine and I'm like okay yeah we we have we do have a lot of weak men right now and we need to get more masculine men men that are are are okay with being men but I see some of the stuff being taught that I'm like well that's not exactly what true you know being a man is that's like you know it's almost like they're trying to prove it and um you know the incel stuff I I had heard heard that and some of those guys were you know were um kind of in that you know in that movement per se it's like almost like this uh watered down version of of masculinity uh because Society has already been pushed down men already been pushed down so weak they don't even know how to be men so it's like they're grasping at straws yeah I'm old enough to remember the Little Rascals that's all I'm thinking is when you say incel I keep seeing the he man what is it He-Man Woman Haters Club what they had on their Treehouse uh yeah I don't know you know um it's it's a weird it's a weird culture but again um there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on right now yeah I me I think like as we're talking just what comes up for me is like speaking up as a human being on uh what is good and you know against what's evil yeah and you know to do that you've got to come from a place of Love cuz a lot of times there's no benefit yeah uh and as as from parenting or just being adults overseeing uh youth um I'm huge on anti-bullying right I I am bullying and and used to you know in our day The Bullying stopped when you when you left school and you went home but now with social media I mean they're getting bullied all through the night and you see it time after time somebody commits suicide or somebody nuts out and comes in and shoots up the school you know those are those are um it goes back to the division though right but uh I just wanted to throw that anti-bullying thing in there because I I'm not a fan of bullying at all well it's causing you know like you're talking about mass shootings like uh it's I think one of the causes what do you what do you think you know are the causes of all the mass shootings that we're experiencing every week now uh that is a that's a not a loaded question but that's that's a tough one because I I from what I've seen and the studies that that we've done um it's always the after action right the after action report we start diving back in after the fact and you start looking at you go oh man there was a there was a sign there there was a sign there there was a sign there problem is as far as law enforcement goes that a lot of times you can't do anything you can go over there and say yeah he said he's going to shoot up the school okay can I lock him up for that well if it meets these standards sure and if an attorney is willing to take the case um but some of them I mean there's a lot of that stuff's bullying or or or diving down that belief system you know um you think it's like a you see these people uh super mentally ill some yeah I mean look at the uh Sandy Hook massacre right that guy was off his meds you know the guy that killed di bagl that was just a it wasn't necessarily a mass shooting event but um off his Med you know well I ask cuz I mean you think about this wasn't happening 30 years ago and they blame guns oh it's guns like well I mean I understand the gun was used but something has had had to happen in in society for us to just go and want to kill a bunch of people like it's not not normal yeah uh some of the things we put together the blocks I teach is um kids online parents are just letting them play whatever these games are so freaking uh realistic though the only thing that's not realistic is in in the video game you can respawn when you die yeah absolutely doesn't necessarily work too well here uh on Earth but the uh there's that desensitization um but I'm going to borrow a term from uh uh an acquaintance friend of mine because we were having this conversation he's a very intellectual guy I was a former police officer in in England and he he teaches at um in Philadelphia and I was asking I go so what is what I did is I was I was coming from an active shooter instructor school and we were asking the question what has changed was exactly what you just said and I posed the same question to him just over some drinks just kind of spitballing and he said you have to take away the opportunity and I was like okay let's dive into that what do you mean because there are more opportunities um for people to do bad things like can you get that gun however but but you know you can block weapons all you want but if the parent has a gun and they go get that gun you got to take away that opportunity I I put it back to uh is very simplistic but when I was a cop you always had to work side jobs if you wanted to make any kind of dun money at all um and there was a one in South Carolina called Frankie's Fun Park it's basically you go there you can do putt putt go-karts video games all that stuff pizza ice cream you name it but when you started to see and I was taught this by the uh older officer when I first came on he goes now listen if you see these kids congregating over in the corner and stuff and they're not spending money because you need to go bust them up he because because there what nothing good is going to come out of it he was 100% right so what was I doing by going over there and going hey what are you guys doing oh okay oh yeah all right you going ride some rides or whatever okay all right okay they disperse I took away the opportunity right some it's very simple but um I thought that was very very uh profound when he said that yeah I mean it's it's so does that mean more does that mean a cop on the corner I don't know uh if nobody respects cops anymore maybe not can you can you do your job as a cop I mean there I've Got Friends in Austin and um again not left or right but I'm just telling you the facts that da came in and started pulling uses of force cases that were completely cleared up to six years prior they were telling me at one point there was 35 officers on the payroll indicted yeah I mean I'm telling you as a law enforcement officer retired and I may Bond back in sure and give it another two years to round it out to a nice 30 um it kind of makes you wonder about doing your job well yeah I I can't imagine who would want to go in and be a cop these days yeah I mean I didn't like uh like I don't like police brutality right so I thought it was a really good thing yeah it should it shouldn't happen at all if you get trainings right right but there was a lot of it going on I mean is you know I look back because I you know I come from the fight world and I look back at some of the cops you know conversations and it it was and they're I still consider them good people it was just a mindset it's not now they like thumping on you and that kind of thing yeah and you know I always thought it was wrong though I didn't I didn't like it I liked there were good people but it was it was the mentality of it and so I thought it was good when they brought cameras in I think good we need cameras but the way people treat cops and how I mean they're human beings so you're you know you're getting pulled over and you're talking [ __ ] to this guy like that's a human being you don't know if he had a bad day just broke up with his wife just had a you you don't know what's going on with him he's another human being and you might catch him at a bad time and if you push those buttons too much yeah you're in a bad situation and so uh I've been blown away at how people treat the cops now and there's like there's no there's no Middle Ground you know yes I think a lot of cops were it was a different time a different era of how to do policing and uh just like we've gone through different eras throughout you know there wasn't as much fight training either right it was just swing a stick yes right exactly yeah and and now uh it is a different time but we've got to if if we don't respect uh cops just as human beings the Golden Rule you know how would you want to be treated you know now if they're a jerk I mean I still wouldn't personally uh well I've been look I've been pulled over by cops when I was a cop and they were jerks yeah I didn't put up with it I'm saying I'm with you if they're a Jerk It's one thing but like you know if they're respectful they're doing their job I'm going to have my hands on the steering wheel I'm going turn the light on yes sir no sir and and be respectful and I've never had a runin now I have well I me I got arrested when I was 20 uh that was uh I had a runin there just cuz I was doing something illegal but um I haven't had a run in in a traffic stop uh type issue I had one time with and this is a people thing this isn't a cop thing he's not a it's not a cop thing it's a people thing a border patrol thing I cross that uh Border in uh TJ all the time you know because the hospital's down there and I was with with my dad uh one one day crossing my parents would come out and you know spend some time out there with us and uh I didn't have my passport which uh my passport was lost and I so I'm crossing constantly with the lost passport I have to deal with it every single time it's it's what is what it is and um he says well how am I supposed to know who you are I like oh can you look it up in the system and and he started just berating me yeah and my and he goes back to the thing my dad's like stay calm ed and uh you know that point you know I'm like manto man like I'm ready to fight this guy yeah you know so but that's the human aspect nobody talks to me like that right it's like he was a jerk my yeah how do you why why you being such a jerk but that's the human aspect and so I feel like and that was just one guy I've crossed that border I don't know I mean the border patrol could probably tell us but like 500 a thousand times I don't know how many times and that was one instance that stuck out like for the most part I'm dealing with them every they're nice people they treat us very well so I feel like we've lost our humanity and how we treat others like in that or treat cops um because they've become the enemy and it's cool for them to be the enemy so you say you said earlier um about is it this the lack of knowledge and I'll go back to that so when Ferguson Missouri happened um and and a lot of people I don't know if they know it or not but the the hands up don't shoot thing that that was in the beginning it never happened and it came out yeah right it never happened and I'm not trying to take up for white or black I mean I've got tons of black friends and like wrong is wrong right but but that guy uh was in fear for life he was in his car the dude's trying to take his gun off of him beating him um there was never a hands up don't shoot situation but after all that happened I remember uh news coverage of uh it was I can't remember which town it was but what they did is they brought in media and you know whatever activists or whatever let us run you through some our training and all it is we call it fats training but it's the it's the simulated it's a screen you have a gun that reads on that screen when you shoot it what we were doing in in our FBI office was we're sitting there but our legal person's behind us so when we make that shot and I would have that legal person come during force on Force training when we're shooting paint rounds and stuff if you did a shooting and it was a deadly force now you after that scenario is over you have to explain why you did what you did M and then they're going to tell you if it's covered under deadly force or not um but what happened is once those people went in and they saw how quick they had to make a split decision of life or death and they all came out going oh my goodness what's what's unfortunate is we can't put that on for everybody right um but that would be great to put out there just like me like you said you sit down at a table with somebody who may have different beliefs for you but we actually have a conversation and you learn something right um that would be great I told a lot of my friends and and acquaintances I'm like man what I would love is once that thing happens let's go right to the cop let's take the camera let's take the camera from the dash and let's put it right on the news live feed but you want to play it from beginning to end not 5 seconds in the middle right so you can't see a play at all I said but you can't do that because it's now an active investigation but when the truth does come out whether it's different or the same as what you got in the beginning it's like 6 months later and it's on page 40 y you know and it's just and and bad things have already happened yeah that that uh specific case I remember um because that was a turning point MH um because it was a hands up don't shoot hands up don't shoot everybody was saying that and I remember my first reaction was this has got to stop like this is [ __ ] like uh this like 2012 2013 if I remember uh and I posted something and one of my SWAT friends messaged me and said hey you know get the full story first yeah and I was like he's right okay and you know it was a turning point I think at least in society because was one where they had said one thing happened and it was completely another I've been on let's just say Ground Zero many times in my career well we're there investigating something and it comes on the news and it is completely different completely different um and and that's that's the thing now if a cop does something wrong man I'll be the first to tell you there was one in uh North Charleston South Carolina the footage was terrible he shoots this guy walking away from him realizes he's messed up but is so panicky because he did it uh he starts trying to cover it up but the camera's still on he goes over and sits a taser on him and goes okay I'm gonna say he's got my no no no well they put that dude under the jail I me he he's done and he should have never been a law enforcement officer but I will tell you as a trainer uh again me and my peers mentors and and people I've mentored a lot of these things you see it may look horrific and it is horrific but from a cop standpoint I'm looking I'm going that's a lack of training MH it's a lack of training and you know and that's sad because the bottom line is as police departments and Sheriff's offices around this country do not have a lot of money yeah almost all of them only require they only required to shoot and qualify once a year because bullets cost money wow you know the FBI you you qualify four times a year yeah and then we're always doing all kinds of other trainings and stuff but that's the thing it's uh I mean there's so many again there's so many Avenues we can go down but it's just not you know and let's let's uh not be so quick to judge yeah but it's hard I mean it's hard not to we all mess up yeah and do it but you we we've got like you know if if we've learned anything at this point we got to wait to get yeah the story yeah you know we've got to because you never know what's being put out in front of us like if is it propaganda is it coming from the left is it coming from the right what's the angle and going back to Undercovers like one of the guys I was talking to who's kind of flit now wait he not kind of he's flip now um and we were first talking and he goes yeah you know look I know you're I know you're a good guy he goes but you know the FBI they put Undercovers in and and they start the one spreading all this stuff and then and then when that guy says oh yeah let's do it and then you arrest them I go I said I know that's what's reported yeah I go but I know a lot of those Undercovers and I said and I'm telling you without a shadow of a doubt there's no way they did it and I said and I can tell you from my experience let's not even think about let's not even talk about people that I wasn't there let's just talk about my experiences um like I said I never brought up murder I never brought up murder I thought we were going to put up Flyers but we were like why did they say bring the guns we got to find out what's going on you make a phone call Guy won't tell you you make another phone call three days later because the Atlanta team's going something's not right we need to find out guy won't tell me but he says I mean I'm not going to do it over the phone but if you want to come down here I'll tell you I'll be there tomorrow and that's when he comes out and says essentially we're going to kill some people so that that wasn't any kind of entrapment but the story would be of course A lot of times it comes out as oh the FBI and Tra well yeah I think right now that is the the feeling and maybe it's cuz it's coming from the top and what's going on with Trump but you know the FBI doesn't have a good you know public uh perception right now we we we haven't since comeing the FBI took the Baton and has not dropped it yeah I mean it's like uh it's it's rough right now but you January 6 a lot of people say there were a lot of undercover agents agent provocators pushing you know stuff like that do you believe that I would I would find that hard to believe I I wasn't there I did infiltrate militia groups who were there waiting on in their words waiting on the word from the from the commander you know in other words they've gone down they've Dove down this rabbit hole and they literally believe that they are there to take over the government just like 1776 and if Trump who they're saying was their guy which Trump doesn't know them you know but if he would have said let's go get them there was a lot of people there mhm um which begs the question to me at least how do how as a law enforcement Community or an intelligence community did we not look at this and say this is could be a powder kid getting ready to go off and not have a boatload of stuff there to take away the opportunity yeah right National Guard all this other stuff but I wasn't there for the planning and I I I try my best not the Monday Morning Quarterback and all that stuff cuz I've been under the micr many times and people are second guessing and it's just not cool but I I personally don't know of any Undercovers um and and one of the reasons I would say that is because if you have I'm also looking at from an operational standpoint if I'm the undercover coordinator or even if I'm the lead tactical guy providing advice to the division one undercover in a sea of hundreds of thousands of people if all hell breaks loose what is our extraction plan how in the hell are we going to prot take that undercover so that I I'm not sure sources I would find it hard to believe we didn't have some I mean just like going back to Charlottesville sure um there had to be sources in there or we're not doing our job right maybe not I'm not saying maybe we don't we're not tasking them um but if we don't have a single source that can provide us information out of hundreds of thousands of people that are there I don't believe as a case agent I'm doing my job yeah if that's my area if that's my area of responsibility yeah no it's interesting because that is kind of like a uh a thought could it but could it have happened sure could have you don't know but you know that's the that's the thing I've got you know some other friends that are FBI agents and great guys and I look at the rap it gets right now and it's like it's sad I don't I don't feel like most of the people in the FBI are like that think it's probably like most people in the FBI are are are good people and they've been caught up with this whole politicizing of of of the FBI and um the weaponization of the doj and you know they all get put in this group you know you're a leftwing libtard or you're a right-wing conspiracy theorist like no no no no they could be just great cops you you can be a trump supporter like so there's a system called Guardian right and that's basically where all the leads get cut but people have access other departments National Guard everybody has access to create a guardian lead MH so once that lead's created used to it may go to somebody and we'd be like oh this is BS blah blah blah after the Parkland school shooting uh it came out there was this I can't remember what it was called but basically there's a big phone bank taking in leads and there is uh but they're not investigators they're not law enforcement officers and it came out after action after the fact that that kid that shot up Parkland had been complained on more than once uh and somebody said well this is nothing but they weren't law enforcement not saying that would have made a difference but pretty much after that fact uh up until when I retired um if somebody creates a guardian lead we had to go interview them or we had to show we cannot find this person at all I mean I've gone with people to interview cuz somebody actually drafted a lead that said the woman said she was kidnapped by ISIS and they replaced her eyes with I always mess it up it was either alligator eyes or Tiger Eyes I think it was alligator IED cuz they're pretty distinct right and I'm like we have we have to go out and find this woman and interview her to find out if she's got alligator eyes I'm like are you kidding me but you had to because that's the rule so after January by the way this is how the conversation goes you knock on the door and they go hello you go I'm special agent Scott Payne this is Task Force officer blah blah blah BL blah we're here to uh we're good you don't have alligator eyes it's good we'll see you you know I mean it's like but but but that's what it became right and so after January 6 or from January 6th and on until I retired I mean what you weren't able to say when you go say it's you I got to come knock on your door it might be 10 o'clock at night you just got a trump support sign in your front yard that does not mean you're white supremacist does not mean you're a hateful person no matter what label people want to put on you right um some are of course but not all right and I'm knocking on your door I can't tell you that the lead came from your sister-in-law who says that she thinks you might be planning something bad because on a Facebook post you said everybody get ready H right now I've got to come knock on your door right and that just started spewing over and over but I had a the co-writer on my book pointed out to me because she did a lot of Journalism overseas in in the desert and stuff she said but what did the FBI do after 911 and I went oh yeah I guess I mean think of Japanese people after World War II the Pearl Harbor bomb you know so we have this jerk reaction aspect but we're also I mean I'm optimistic I'm I'm definitely a glasses half full guy we're trying to find to make sure nothing bad's going to happen sure I can't tell you how many people I've gone out and interviewed and because of a league came in and they said something pretty radical and I'm like hey I don't think I need to explain how times are right now but uh you're well within your First Amendment right I I I took an oath to uphold all amendments not just one or two um but I just want to make sure you're not really planning on doing nothing bad are you because we just want to make sure that innocent people aren't being hurt and sometimes that's enough you know yeah um what about the the base case when um when you closed it uh or when you when it finished how did how did that happen so um I'm doing that rhetorical so right you know so so kind of goes like this we've gotten into the group or I'd gotten into the group um we as a team but I'm the undercover right uh we get in there I start gain the trust of a lot of people we do a lot of trainings um and by the way uh a 19yearold kid led a carban training um with the ARs machine guns uh semi-automatic he led the training and and some of the tactics training and it was good it was not bad wasn't the best but I'm thinking to myself self if this guy really did break bad he could get the drop on a lot of people cuz he's fast and accurate now ader all had a little bit to do with that cuz they would all pump that before we'd go out and training and I'm like I'm good I'll just drink my coffee um but we started uncovering uh some different things and like I said they tied in the paganism stuff and we would go down and do blots um and like I might pray to the Norse pantheon God of whoever and then you would see the one guy he says well I'm in the Egyptian Pantheon and he starts praying to some Demon and it's about like flesh melting off and blood and gore and I'm like boy he's angry keep an eye on him you know but we started uncovering uh several plots um we had the murder plots um that that were going to be uh they what they believed was an antifa couple in Georgia but that was just the start uh Luke who went by the moniker tmbb the militant Buddhist he had already um started a list him and pestilence had already started a list of like journalist and like news people like on TV and I'm like I said oh so let me get this straight we're going to actually kill these people that are on TV too and they're like yeah this is just the beginning and I'm like well it's a good thing we've got this family to do our first dry run on you know um and and again it's it's the ax and furtherance of right so uh one guy bought bag catchers uh you they attached to your AR so if we did have to shoot them instead of the brass coming out and hitting the ground that bag catches it um if you want to kill somebody these are other ideas if you want to kill somebody let's do it with a revolver because it doesn't eject the brass um you can put a silencer on that Revolver They were going through all this uh one will post here they wanted me to go down with them to kill the family and then pestilence would burn the house down we started uncovering all this stuff meanwhile uh the group in um Baltimore Delaware area there was a I can't remember who the governor was at that time in Virginia but uh very anti-gun and there was going to be a huge gun gun rights rally around January is of 20 19 I think I got it right 19 um and then I think that's right either way it's 19 or 20 but their idea was uh they've already gone out one of them's gone out and bought he had a 6.5 creedmore uh he did have a job uh which was rare for the most of the people in the group um 6.5 Creed more and bought a $6,000 thermal scope I mean you can Bluetooth this thing you do all kinds of stuff and the idea was is it would help level the playing field um for him to take out other people at nighttime because he wasn't as good of a sniper as others but again uh Baltimore FBI had a wir tap going um and these two guys and the stuff that they would talk about in their apartment it would you would be just shocked and it's out there it's out there it's been released by Canadian broadcast it was um it's I mean they're talking about like hey we'll go shoot a cop let the cop pull somebody over we can take that cop out with a sniper rifle go down there because after we kill the cop what are you going to get you're going to get bullets you're going to get some more weapons you're going to get bulletproof vest and we'll just keep doing that almost like the snip M case like driving around DC and shooting out a trunk um and that's what we started uncovering uh and there were some other crimes like uh tagging or or defacing synagogues and stuff like that but these these this group really really and the last couple I was in it a lot of people think white supremacy they think antiblack man these people did they hate Jewish people really hate them and I'm just like and then it goes back to the whole Hitler thing you know who uh anyway um so uh one of the things that was always brought up and is interesting about the the base case is we did do a Halloween training and uh we were out there training and they went and stole a goat um or a ram I've asked owners of goats Rams it had ram horns I I think the size of the difference I don't know but either way they stole it and uh and I'd already taught some hand toand combat stuff that day um for training and I was I no dozed off in my truck and uh I get went to banging Pale Horse you got to get up you got to get up we got this goat I'm like what do you mean you got a goat I'm like oh man where did y'all take this thing they stole it so we go down in this long walk in the woods but I'd already been down there several times so it didn't freak me out the first time I walked down there Ed I was like am I getting butterflies right now I'm like this is this is kind of spooky uh so uh the long and short of it is is the sacrific the goat at a pagan blot to start the wild Hunt in Norse mythology the wild Hunt was Odin and other gods going out and just tearing up and wiping out their enemies right well their idea of the wild Hunt was we're going to start doing the same thing but it's going to be wiping the the world of non-whites and Jewish right and we're sacrificing this goat which by the way is a love offering and it needs to be it there needs to be no negativity because this goat needs to know it's loved or Ram know it's loved because it's going to Odin and and we will see it again in Valhalla or whatever we're talking about don't get me wrong I mean my whole arm's Viking kind of stuff you know but uh uh so he goes to chop the head of it off and I guess the backstrap of the goat that the the machete didn't even break a hair on it man he comes down conk and you're like oh no and I'm holding the back of the goat and I'm and did that Split Second in your mind you're going this is going to be so bloody and nasty but uh one guy had a gun they ended up shooting The Goat in the head CH cut the goat's throat um fill a chalice or glass full of blood and then we're walking around and a lot of them did acid um of course I didn't uh but went around and they would do the drop of acid and then drank the blood so by the time the glass got to me it was already clotting and this is where the Rolling Stones article got it wrong it says I said screw that no I I drank I I didn't turn it up because it was already getting chunky but I put my finger in there and drank it but I say all that because a lot of people are freaked out about that but that was a hate Camp because two days later after everybody that everybody doing acid killed the second day it's raining um but on the third day we're doing all these propaganda videos and remember me talking to you about radicalization of teens online teens online or radicalizing anybody they do these propaganda videos and the Only Rule was the next video has to be better than the last one and we're doing all that we held a fire a bonfire we burnt uh holy Bibles we burnt uh American flags you know F you're Jewish god all this stuff and then you talk about being different than what you believe of course yeah you know um I will say that the Bibles didn't burn that was pretty amazing to me um you can say what you want people like well the paper's made out of sand it doesn't burn I said I watched everything burn the cover was burnt but it flipped open in the pages and it to the point to where one guy said these [ __ ] Bibles just won't burn you know um but after all of that that's when I gained more trust and that's when they started bringing me in on these murdered things so what happens is um we're now it's almost like a Master of Puppets thing because you got so many FBI field officers investigating people in their own jurisdictions that are members of the base and we're like how do we can we because if we take this one off it's going to burn this one and vice versa you just you know so it just you know whe what you want to believe you know divine intervention or whatever you want to believe or just luck everything came together and we were able to I think it started with me on a Friday I flew to Baltimore uh met the case team drove up to Delaware trained with those guys all day sighting in weapons talking about if we were actually going to go down the following week to the gun rights rally because their idea was is to pop a few rounds because you would pretend like you're a 3center and all the cops will be there and there's going to be all these people and it's going to be a powder keg waiting to go off and they were all like what if this is the bgoo what if this is the set off to the Boogaloo how bad would you feel if you weren't there to to to make somebody bleed kind of thing I'd never forgive myself that's where we're getting and uh you know it goes to the whole gorilla Warfare poison Water Supplies derail trins take down Power Systems um anything to create chaos so we got that going and the case team's like we want to we want to dot a couple of eyes and cross a couple of T's uh a USA is ready the assistant United States Attorney ready we just want to make sure about these things to to seal it tight to get the arrest so it's an airtight case and I did that and then that Saturday I I think I crashed about 3:00 4 in the morning I got up and drove back to the airport flew to Atlanta got delayed rental car place closed hauled butt up to Rome Georgia where the other crew was at and we got everything tight on the last guy that wanted to be a part of the murders and uh so that was Sunday yeah so Sunday I drove home I got home probably like I don't know early morning hours Monday slept a little bit Tuesday I was back in Rome meeting the SWAT team that was going to do the hit the big thing with Luke was is he was on that 100 Acre Farm MH so there's no real way to sneak onto it without neighbors and stuff knowing so out of all the arrests that were going to happen we were most concerned about that one safety-wise so I I did some UC undercover work and uh and we got it to where I was going to be picking him up going to lunch and then my truck would have a problem and the SWAT team would hit us um and that's kind of how it all went down so that that Wednesday we arrested the Georgia crew um and kept it real quiet Thursday morning early hours uh FBI Washington field office SWAT and FBI Baler SWAT hit all the other guys and then it started trickling and I'm just quiet because I'm in the main chat for the base on on wire and there're now the affidavits are starting to come out and they're like oh my gosh did you see this you know P I mean I'm sorry uh tmb's been arrested oh wait a minute you know can't go back's been arrested punish snake's been arrested and punish snake was a Canadian um who had absconded illegally into the United States because he got doxed you know what doxed is right so um he got outed for the listeners that may not know he got outed in in media and everything in Canada for being a white supremacist and he absconded illegally there was a time where we were looking for him we found him down at the I went to a training down at the farm we had no idea we went down there and I was like there's an extra person under the awning I walked up and I go oh my gosh it's the Canadian so they got him um um and then I'm sitting there and it's Friday and I'm watching all the chatter has anybody talked to Pale Horse this sat the other this that and the other well here's the crazy thing about the Bas the leader and creator of the bass is named Ronaldo nazaro Ron Ronaldo Ronaldo nazaro is an American citizen who graduated from it wasn't Purdue was it villain NOA I don't know but he graduated from a pretty prominent School um was Army intel was uh was contracted under the Department of Justice I can't remember if it was FBI or whatever well now he resides in Russia and he created the base he had some land in the Pacific Northwest but uh you know awful lot of money to say you're just translating English or teaching English right so you know draw from that what you want but he's the leader and as I'm watching right around 5:00 on Friday I see hey you know uh how how can we not know if there's a Fed in here blah blah blah we've done this because every time a member would get doxed in the base and get outed the op operational security got tighter in other words now I'm not just going to come meet you and talk to you face to face I'm going to make you use racial slurs and see if you're uncomfortable using you know things like that um to be vetted thoroughly so right around that time Roman comes on and he says uh I don't know if we could ever something to the effect of I don't know anything we done anything we did could have outed him he was one of our best members and then I'm reading it I'm going oh he knows it's me now you know and uh and he starts laying it out and he said that I went to every training which should have been a maybe that should have been a red flag but I didn't go to everyone he got that wrong but um anyway you're sitting there watching it you're watching them reading it and then boom it says you've been removed by Roman so I screenshotted that and sent it to all the teams and said I'm out um but there were members in there that went on to say things like wait you're telling me the Fed was the guy with the deep voice and they're like yeah and they're go you know there was something really endearing about him and then the other day would be like well maybe that's why they picked him and stuff so the thing is is it's still out there because of course everybody wasn't arrested because everybody didn't commit a crime necessarily right and hopefully we did our due due diligence and that scared a lot of people off to say this is wrong I'm not going to do this anymore but a lot of people just change their moniker and they go right to this other website or Discord or it was 4chan 8 Chan 12chan whatever they got now threa all these things but like you look at the mass shooter from uh New Zealand Christ Church New Zealand he was posting live on it was either hn I think it was H Chan at that point he's posting live I'm getting ready to go do this I'm going to blog it live all the white supremacy stuff stuff so you know it's still out there how big would you say uh it is currently in the United States I you know I'm I'm I'm hesitant to throw a number because like even in the Rolling Stones article which again the the the journalist is now a friend of mine for life but that's his verbiage you know it was an interview um million I don't know about no dag a million there's some think tanks in DC that said there's over a million White suprem is you waiting to knock on your door and and I'm like I ain't seen that but I've seen yeah thousands yeah thousands and you could and you could see and the but this is just from my experience and where I was at right hopping um in different cases but some cases might have hundreds of members and spewing all kinds of uh anti-semitic hate I would go to bed and I'd wake up six or so hours later and I'm 2,000 post behind so for 5 months I'm going through every post cuz I'm afraid mhm that I'm going to miss something right and I don't want anybody to get hurt because of something I did wrong right but after 5 months of reading nothing but posts thousands and thousands of posts I'm like okay we got to stop because I can't I mean there's they're not they're not doing anything bad but I don't know I mean hundreds to thousands maybe but then again are you just on the outskirts and just spewing hate or are you actually diving in and you're going to be one of those um one of those longone Wolves yeah you know know I think we see that I I just I've always been curious cuz they right now I think the media makes it seem like there's a lot of white supremacists uh well they're also tying that militia stuff in there right so you can go to other things for militia stuff too telegram this that and the other and there's recruitment videos and stuff for you know anti-government you know showing you pictures of China and this that and the other and um I think they're tying them all together but yeah yeah but um you know I at least in the circles that I run if there was a white supremacist that was like hateful we'd be like you know get out yeah and it's it's unfortunate that they tie you know that to just the regular folk cuz you know none of us are any of that no there's no way um you know on on the base of on the base story you know when it came out in Rolling Stone um what was the reaction from the FBI [Laughter] uh some was good some was not so good um again FBI has an FBI pre-publication unit um it's pre-publication review office and uh I'll just say that a lot of us aren't really didn't know what all you're supposed to put through them um we briefed the we briefed the article up for three months uh and I guess it didn't go to the right people so there was a little bit of snafu there um I mean I actually had an award taken from me but uh it's okay uh what was the award supposed to be it was the uh FBI director's award oh man for that case yeah oh man but before the article came out I was told I was getting it and I was pretty proud um because that's one I'd never gotten and then in 48 hours I was told that it was being pulled from me and the article hadn't even been out and I get it I get an need jerk reaction and stuff cuz you don't know if there's anything classified or if I'm burning somebody but um I did my due diligence with the uh with the other under covers that were on the cases that I were on and I'm like look I'm retired I'm coming out are you okay with me showing my face are you're not okay with me showing my face um cuz at first I was like I want to show my face and then I was like no I'm not going to show my face and then I'm like well if you see my tattoos that's still and then I I started thinking of one of my mentors Jack Garcia who was basically a full-time Undercover almost his entire career for the FBI did a lot of Mafia type stuff big Cuban guy um Big Jack and uh I remember his his book coming out and he was doing the typical interviews where it's the silhouette you can't see his face and it's the robotic voice or whatever the the voice box thing on it and after about two months he's like screw this he was on 60 Minutes and said look I'm wiing Garcia I'm everybody calls me Jack I'm not a bad guy I'm retired this is my stuff so um the article though uh you know my it did great things um and I like the article but I never got to see the article before it came out as you know it's journalist Rolling Stone they'd read it to me but at 12,000 words I start nodding off and stuff so there were some things in there that I I think could have been a little better but again it was it was an interview um I thought it painted the FBI in a positive light which is big for me um I could I could be a Basher I could probably even be a maybe a whistleblower um but I'm not trying to put I'm not trying to tarnish the badge um one bad incident like George Floyd you know that that tarnished a ton of badges for cops who were good cops you know and that was an atrocious thing that happened but um I'm not trying to do that I'm trying to um paint a positive light and maybe say some good things yeah do you do you worry about uh you know being public like uh for for your safety cuz people know who you are yeah I get asked that a good bit and um for me personally um I'm not it's not me I'm worried about but you know family and stuff I don't want my family to be scared and and they are and they get scared and but in the criminal system this is where a lot of people may not understand when we arrest somebody in the United States we build a case and we arrest you at some point we have to turn over was called discovery which is pretty soon after the arrest so that means that with it's Federal it's the assistant United States Attorney through the United States attorney's office we hand over everything that we did to build that case I don't care if it's me and you sitting there and I'm taking notes those notes should have been put in what we call a 1A and put in the file and it's all released so the bottom line is this at some point the defendant is going to be sitting with their attorney and they're going to get the discovery and they're going to know that I was the undercover mhm they're going to know it they may not know my full name but they know that I was the undercover um so I'm burnt at that point as far as that case goes you know I did one in a rural County in Tennessee I could never go back there you know the Outlaws I could never go back to the Outlaws I've been I've been asked to do a a biker club and it might I'd be like hey who are they affiliated with will they're affiliated with the Outlaws nope can't do it because it would be one Regional run because I mean I traveled up and down the east coast and out to Sturgis um and I'm like it just one big meat and somebody could see me and go hey that guy's a fed you know so um I was blessed in those aspects being covered while I was out there uh my wife helped me come up with the terminology is I I wasn't necessarily undercover I was under his cover there you go so um and hers too but you know it's uh I I I said it this way I'm not trying to sound cocky um I don't live in fear I don't walk around living in fear on eggshell walking on eggshells scared but I don't close my eyes either I don't turn the Blind Eye you know um I will say for the most part the friendships or relationships that I built on Undercovers a lot of them still we still like each other afterwards again back to Bugs Bunny remember the sheep dog and the coyote they fight all day at work and then they clock out and it's like hey I'll see you tomorrow Sam you know that kind of thing um I've actually been drunk dialed by people that I put in jail cuz I would leave my undercover phones on you know whatever I had for that case I wouldn't just shut it off I'd leave it on for a good couple of months never know if you're going to get threatened or whatever I'd get hey Scott this is your boy I love you man I just want you to know I know you doing your job you know so um but yeah that's just something you got to deal with and there going to be haters out there uh you know when this thing started with the Rolling Stones Magazine I you know you find out people that you you may thought were your friends or whatever they're saying things and it hurts at least it hurt me yeah and I'd be good for a couple of days and I'd be sick in my stomach and thatd be good for a couple days and I'd be sick in my stomach and then at the end I'm like wait a minute I'm a good guy I mean I don't I don't know what you want me to do and you just cross a threshold to where you're like I don't it's not that I don't really care what you think but I don't really care what you think yeah you know what I mean um and I've always been a boisterous guy you know somebody like after before the Rolling Stones article was about to come out they were like in their opinion and they were an acquaintance I won call him a friend because Brothers don't do what some people do you know they're not your brother or sister but it was like what you need to do is you need to lay low in The Tall Grass you need to wait several years well how many years is long enough and I said here you know what I appreciate your concern for me but we've known each other for about 15 years and we have drank a lot together and we put on a lot of schools together not once have you ever asked me about my family so it's okay I hear what you're saying but you do you and I'm going to do me I don't know how to do that I'm a musician and a singer I'm playing in front of a thousand people at three or four Services yeah at church and stuff so that's just me I go out and I speak and I teach and some people will say you just like talking about yourself well that just lets me know you don't really know me right you know and by the way this is something else culturally why is it so hard especially in groups like military groups and why is it so hard for somebody just say congratulations right why is it so hard yeah it's not a competition I've noticed it with some of my military uh friends that are um I'm not going to say higher profile but you know you kind of watch the comp the competition yeah and it's like you know uh you know I actually thought about it a lot like I wonder what causes that I guess the egos can be so high yeah that uh you know instead of just being happy for it gets toxic I've been on squads where we're all good friends now now but there were times under certain management that the squad that was so good became so toxic and nobody like you get an award oh well you just got it because of this oh I found out why you got that award because a person on your case team sits on the board for the like come on well thanks for doing some you know whatever why can't you just say congratulations I've had people that I did not like and I mean I tried to like them and I did not like them but they did good on the squad and I'd go over it and they'd be like looking at you shocked like you're coming up after the briefing I go dude this is one hell of a case yeah I mean this is awesome and they're like yeah isn't it see it's no hard feelings and if you want to go tactics I'll put it another way tactically I may love you to death you may be the Godfather of my children you may be my blood brother whatever best friend ever if you're not tactically sound I don't want you making that entry with me right on the other hand you could be somebody I can't stand I wouldn't I don't even want to have lunch with you I want to have a beer with you but you're tactically sound well then I want you going in it's not subjective right it's subjective right you can't this just it can get toxic like that but it sometimes that hurts but you know I don't know if I got to pay money for this but it come across my mind I'm like you know Taylor Swift song I'm haters are going to hate I'm just G to shake it off right right right exactly exactly um what's the impact of uh you know of your family through this like how did your family help you you get through 23 years in the FBI well um probably solely second to God right um for me um but just brought up something in my head you know when things are good you kind of forget when things were rough and when we were doing this book like you know everybody like I can write a great 302 which is a report for the FBI it's going to be articulate it's going to be the facts that's nothing nobody wants to read it reads like a report right but people want to hear the turmoil they want to they you know that's that's good reading and that's good lesson learning well me and my wife we at one point we were like looking at each other going man we've got to dive back into the bad times we don't want to but even going through that for the book I learned things that I didn't know like uh during those three years or when I'm running 50 million ways uh I was a ghost at home I would arrive home and I would be so beat because Not only was I Undercover on two different cases I was the uh the primary relief supervisor for the squad which means if the boss has gone you're running the squad uh I was on SWAT um I ran all the Tactical training and firearms training for Mallen so I mean it would be a full month of just you know just swamped with hardly any days off um and I would come home and just crash with my with my children at that point little but how many many kids do you have two two okay um and then unless you want to start counting dogs cuz they're kids too yeah that's right or older parents which is kind of like having a kid that's right because but uh yeah it's it hurts cuz I look back and you're like man but I I am a workaholic um I get it naturally I'm goal oriented um but we kind of came up with a model because I said look it's God first family second I said if you call me and I'm like yeah yeah yeah and I go to get if you just break that thought process and say uh Scott I need you now I know because at that point the job's not more important than the family right but you get wrapped up in your goals and getting all this stuff done and and and and doing good work yeah but it's it's uh it is not an easy balance and I didn't do great at it um I don't think I did as terrible as some but again it's not a comp right um uh but my my wife is a saint for sure that's awesome for uh somebody so I get these calls now you retired and they're like hey man what are you up to and I go well I'm trying to pay my wife back for all the [ __ ] she put up with for 28 years you know uh so how's that working I sometimes I do good sometimes not so good yeah but um would you say the position that you're in now though it it was all built up and worth it like the yeah I don't regret a lot yeah I don't regret a lot for instance I got PTSD um and you know I I'm I I I'm big on Mental Health you know uh especially in the law enforcement world and the same thing for military I mean what are we number one for you know what law enforcement military is number one for divorce suicide yeah alcoholism which can tie in pills and everything else you shove down your throat these days um and who wants to sign up for that right I'm number one woo yeah you know go out with a bang um but I'm big on that and I've taken some of the blocks that I've that I've taught over the years and I've Twisted it more towards mental health because as I mentioned earlier I did meet my threshold I'd gone too long I applied the warrior mentality to everything I wasn't taking days off because I didn't want management bitching because I was gone um I was burning the candle at both in so I ran out of wax I'm not saying I'm better than anybody else by any means right um there are some that can make it way farther than I did I do think it es and flows it's kind of like working out um sometimes your your threshold can be crossed pretty early but um I I forget where I was going what would you you talking about mental health and um you know kind of how it is I was going to ask you uh with uh you remember what you're going to say yeah okay well I was going to say I had PTSD you asked me basically a a question about do I regret kind of not asking me if I regret but it's how I was thinking um I thought one day I'm like man if I if this wouldn't have happened if I would have if those back surgery complications wouldn't happened and for three weeks I wouldn't have been through living hell and all these doctors didn't know what's going on I wouldn't have PTSD one one thing and I would have never had to suffer any of that and then I'm telling you Ed within 30 seconds I said but if I didn't have that when I crashed Joe pistone wouldn't have been calling me m the Donnie Brasco uh other men T Steve Sal whatever uh Mike all these guys um wouldn't have been calling me and saying country is my nickname Big Country I'm more medium now but uh I was bigger then uh but they'd be like hey big country you all right and I'm like yeah man I'm I'm I'm doing okay they told me they're the ones that told me take care of yourself take care of your family but as soon as you can put pen to paper about everything you've learned in this whole thing because that's how we get our best blocks of instruction and that's how you pay it forward and they were 100% right right so without me going through those bad things I would have never created those blocks of instruction and met thousands upon thousands of people so um I'm not a guy that really looks back and says man I'd change a whole bunch you know could I have done better yeah but I also believe everything happens for a reason yeah same same man I look at like where uh we're at in life like for for the business side is as in like God had a plan he literally didn't let us get too big too soon because we weren't ready for it right and the timing has always been perfect even when at the time it didn't make sense and yeah you know we might go bankrupt or we might do you know and so same it's like those those tough times uh they kind of they kind of uh mold you absolutely so absolutely and and and and again kind of through the undercover work you know in the Outlaws I was in for a year and a half and then they brought me down into the it's more like a seller but into the basement of the clubhouse and stripped me at gunpoint looking for a wire after a year and a half but the reason they did it is because we up the Annie about doing this big dope deal if I didn't have a wire on me it wouldn't have been a big deal I'd have taken my clothes off fine let's go m i was wired to the hill and they missed it by that much so I learned from that where how how did they miss it uh it's just if you can say if you can't well you know even for the book I just say hey it was I I don't think I say what part of clothing it was I just said hey it was it was on my person but I will tell you that um I was pretty anal about the thing they wanted to put on me to record video yeah cuz the first couple iterations were not okay with me cuz I'm like I don't feel comfortable in it it doesn't matter if you think it's worth or not I'm the one going through the door yeah if I'm not if I'm not comfortable with it I'm not going to do it and I think it ended up saving me that night wow so I don't know if I'd have gotten my butt kicked I don't know if they would have shot me I don't know but uh yeah but I learned from that and that molds you to become stronger as as an undercover not just anything else because you got everything on the line there um and we got about about seven minutes I'll have three minutes before my attorney call no good uh but your your mindset while you're being stripped naked and searched like what how do you keep your I was back the very beginning of the interview like how do you keep your composure scared shitless yeah um so if you talk to a lot of tactical trainers we always say Hey you bleed on the Range so you don't die in the street so some people call it muscle memory I got a pet peeve with that because I don't think my bicep has a brain but if I train or we train and we train and we train on getting shot at getting off the X Change I can show you video after video of cops probably even military but more M Min are more law enforcement that got into shooting they have no idea how many rounds they shot they have no idea that they took effective cover when they did a magazine exchange they have no idea that they got off the X because they trained so it became instinctive so even though you're having that old [ __ ] moment that adrenaline dump where your your eyes uh you get um we get you get uh audio exclusion auditory exclusion so your ears are going W who any traumatic incident I mean I remember being in my first car wreck it was slow motion right you know a time dilation your eyes are going click click you can feel your heart beating it feels like it's 5 minutes and it's only 30 seconds you know um but in the undercover world you don't necessarily get to do that unless you go back to the school and you roleplay or you go out with a group of Undercovers and you just start working it and you do a bunch of wh ifs what happened in that old [ __ ] moment because I definitely had it um is I forgot my middle name but I didn't realize I did a distraction technique I'm saying all these things um now I'm also listening and I'm going oh they're going to run me on who aat.com they're going to run me they're going to gole me okay I'm also looking at my friend like probably the second closest relationship I had out of the two-year case he's the one he's the enforcer he's the one having stripped me man um and I'm looking into his eyes and I'm not saying it out loud but I'm basically my face is saying am I going to be all right and his face back to me was kind of you're going to be all right but then he ends up grabbing the piece of clothing and looks pretty much right where the the equipment was at and I and you can hear me in the background Going H and I don't even know I'm doing it right but it's it's one of those things where I I think it may appeared that I was cool I wasn't cool yeah but it was just that the training came in wow yeah um you think he saw it maybe and just no he didn't for sure they yeah that's wild man I mean it's got a uh you think you have PTSD from those type of instances no not necessarily mine was mine was back surgery complications that put me down for 3 weeks and basically I felt like I couldn't breathe I would eat this much food and I felt like I was suffocating and after 3 weeks we figured out what it was but by that time the damage was done so so fast forward five seven years later I'm in The Outlaw case um been out drinking all night you wake up you can hear the whiskey and eggs swishing in your belly you know and I started doing like a P90X workout I came up I was down in Florida and I came up for air and it wasn't there and my mind reverted back to 2002 to the PTSD you know or to that to that traumatic incident and uh yeah that was mine just the breathing stuff you you had mentioned mental health for police officers and Military and let's kind of close it with this what would you say to somebody like that has gone through something traumatic uh talk to somebody absolutely talk to somebody I'll give you my number my phone rings 247 and that's no [ __ ] I do have the notification sounds off from like I don't know whatever 10308 right but it anytime you want or find somebody I get the stereotypical you might want to not want to talk to your psychologist at your at your department because it could leak out it may affect even though they say it's not supposed to it does happen but find somebody there's somebody there find you a Christian counselor find you a buddy you're not the only one going through it um there are tools you can put in your toolbox to help it's not it doesn't mean you're wimp because I mean I said look man if you know anything about construction what if I just gave you a hammer and a screwdriver and said build that house that's going to be pretty damn tough but if I fill your truck up with tools to build that house with it's just more tools and other people have gone through it and you can get and and again you might go talk to somebody and they might be terrible mhm well I'm going to use one from my pastor he talked about getting burned at church here's what he said you ever had food poisoning everybody raised their hand he said did you quit eating right exactly that's a good point so go find you another therapist you know but but don't hold it in don't listen not in arguments but in discussions with people who don't know law enforcement I said do you know how often it is you show up in uniform and everybody's happy to see you because it's rare it's rare maybe a car wreck where somebody needs to be pulled out or something but when you walk into somebody's home or you stop somebody yeah it's it's kind of rare so and you you start getting spit at and you start getting treated like trash and you take that home and you keep it and then you let it affect your family and then when you go out with your family you look at somebody that looks similar to what you've been dealing with and you're already generalizing them then break away let it go you know talk to somebody absolutely anything got you'd like to say kind of in closing H love Yeah man is answer yeah I i' I've been blessed I've been blessed as a case agent I've been blessed as a undercover I've been blessed as an instructor and speaker um I just appreciate the time man you know I've already said my piece about there's women and men out there that have done way more than me and that's that's a huge thing to me because um even if they don't want to talk about it that's fine but um I'm just trying to to do good you know absolutely well Scott thanks for coming all the way from Knoxville your uh your career is amazing thanks for doing what you've done for you our country too you know taking dangerous people uh that want to kill others and harm others you know off the streets and uh you know doing God's work in many ways it's uh you know if you haven't been told thank you uh recently thank you for for what you do uh I consider it an honor I'm grateful man and I'll say one last thing this is some this is how I start conversations with some of the people I've had to from Hollywood and stuff I go before we start I just want you to have this mindset there are evil people on this planet that want to do evil things to good people not everybody but there are those so just keep that in mind remember that thank you got thank you buddy we're going to actually kill these people that are on TV too like journalists and like news people and they're like yeah this is just the beginning the FBI doesn't have a good public perception right now we haven't since coming January 6 a lot of people say there were a lot of agent provocator do you believe that I would find that hard to believe I I wasn't there I did infiltrate militia groups who were there in the Outlaws I was in for a year and a half and then they brought me down into the basement of the clubhouse and stripped me at gunpoint looking for a wire I was wired the hill and they missed it the division that's being caused it does seem like there is some type of movement that is not open in public but it is open because we can see it happening it is a fact that our adversaries overseas they do put money into the states and not just on white supremacy side they do it on the far left side cuz they want chaos I don't care which belief system you got it's just evil yes Scott pay welcome to podcast thank you very much retired undercover FBI agent um overall great dude we have a lot of mutual friends as well yes uh John T Y uh Glenn Jacobs Rich walls that whole crew so uh I appreciate them introducing uh you know us and looking forward to this podcast yeah me too so um you know you were an undercover FBI agent how long were you in the FBI for I was in the FBI for 23 years but I was a uh I usually term it as I was a real cop first um in South Carolina uh five years so three as a uniform Patrol but two as a vice and narcotics investigator so on a street level I was already starting to do undercover work making Street buys and stuff like that so that's when I started really getting the undercover bug and then I got hired by the FBI and you know as soon as I could get into the program or you try to get into the program it's a it's a tough program to get into the certification process is pretty gruesome some some say it's the it's the hardest thing to get certified in in the FBI I I'll put HRT hostage rescue team above it cuz you know that's more physical but yeah so where were you uh a street cop at first Greenville South Carolina Greenville South Carolina and you you went to the FBI and we'll go through like a a timeline of everything I think that'd be interesting sure to kind of go through your career and talk about the different cases um because you got some pretty famous cases you worked on yeah um so you get into the FBI wanting to be an undercover uh FBI agent um once you got in what what was the process and uh where did you go so uh when I got hired by the FBI you know you're going through the academy and uh you got 56 field offices you don't know where you're going to go you can list them but you'll sweat and lose sleep and you go back and change it it really doesn't matter I mean just let me tell you my top 10 if I'm not going to get them send me where you want to send me but I got New York City oh wow so here I am a country boy out of South Carolina and my first office is New York City um I was actually still assigned to New York when 9911 happened it's just that I would that day it happening I was in San Antonio undercover San Antonio Texas undercover so uh you get there I ended up uh as a case agent um going to the Colombian drug Squad and uh yeah I mean you're a brand new agent in New York City they're huge cases I was at the bottom of the Run you're still learning how to be an agent and then uh amazingly after about 3 years in New York City uh I got a transfer to the San Antonio division because of undercover work I was doing and after I finished that undercover I went to the border of Mexico so I was stationed in macallen Texas for 6 and A2 years oh wow working the border and then they came out with a policy that said and it's still the current policy for transfers if you are in a hard to Staff office for five or more years and it's not that Mallen is a hard ship it's just it's hard to staff because you're on the border um if you've done five or more you name which philadelph you want to go to and and you Trump everybody so by the time that policy came out I'd already had 6 and a half years in and I named East Tennessee oh nice you know so so you go into New York like what's the first uh let's say intense undercover situation uh that you were in so I wasn't certified yet as an undercover but you can do like cameos um and because of my background as a as a bis narcotics investigator I'm within ypd you know uh back then they had like 42,000 officers um so we would go and it might be something like there's nothing really intensive uh there was intensive there was some intense stuff when I was in South Carolina buying dope and stuff but in New York I just did a couple of cameos where maybe we've intercepted a a 5,000 uh 5,000 lbs of weed which back then was a big illegal thing you know 98 right um and then we replicate that how it's supposed to be delivered say it gets popped in La then we replicate that uh that shipment I mean everything tape everything and depending on which United States Attorney assistant United States Attorney you're working with they want different things to get the prosecution so we rigged the Box up so once we delivered it to the Jamaican gang um when they popped the lid it notified us and we went in rest everybody so it wasn't a lot of stuff in in New York except for I landed the gig in San Antonio it's a classified case it's like the only classified case I ever did an undercover on it's it's been outed but I don't want to be called back and put on the box that's okay um you went to macallen though after and that's on the border so you're dealing with the cartels you're dealing with a lot of the all the trafficking stuff uh what was that like uh great I mean it's if you if you love working you know I don't to say great because there was bad things but um it was a great Community like all the law enforcement Community or all our wives I mean we were joking cuz like all of our wives were pregnant at the same time we would all go meet our wives for lunch uh we would have like weekend get togethers but a very close-knit tight Community but I got there in 01 and shortly after I mean 911 right they started creating or they they I can't remember when they created The Joint terrorism task force I think it was before yeah it was definitely before 9/11 but after 911 they were cranking everything to it so the flavor of the month down there was special interest alien smuggling and you're starting to hear that more on the news now again it kind of surprised me they haven't changed the name cuz that's I mean the government's notorious for that um but special interest alien smuggling would be people coming into the United States illegally but they're coming from threat countries so China or you know back then maybe even Yemen Al-Qaeda radical Muslim something like that at at one point they even had Brazil listed not because Brazil was known for having terrorists but they were known to have um camps that were helping terrorists get westernized and come in so that's what we were working so all I did as a guy that worked drugs pretty much my entire career um I went to all my contacts at border patrol and stuff and said hey we're changing the focus we're looking for this and we started catching loads and following loads and and getting a lot of Intel but my squad worked violent crime and gangs as well so we had kidnapping kidnappings and extortions I mean three four a week what's it like you know you go into a situation you're undercover I mean you're with murderers people that you know if they uh understood what you were they would kill you probably right there probably depending on the people depend on the people um how do you stay calm in that situation and kind of in uh in character that's a good question cuz the younger in my younger days I was way more Brash and and way more dumb you know uh So you you're more of that I mean you're still type A personality I'm still a type A personality but me and my peers we kind of we kind of figure let's say you're a season undercover you look at a group and you go you're not going in there to do that undercover because it's too dangerous but us and our own head we'll go but I'm going to because I can do this so as far as the the stuff I did on the border as an undercover was like in there on the border I just pretended to be a truck driver stuff like that delivering illegal aliens into a motel that was stashing them or something like that um but while I was in now as a case agent they go hand inand with me like I'm developing sources a source is doing what I do as an undercover it's just that they're not a bonded law enforcement officer they probably have a felony on their record um but they're the ones going in and recording uh and getting evidence for us um I will say that back then oel oel cardus was the head of the golf cartel so there was some kind of like sop you know there was like a standard you know if they kidnap somebody they're calling and and extorting the family they want money we try to start working with them and it essentially we we broke her a deal to where usually we're handing over a vehicle with so many miles on it worth so much money with as much money as the family could come up with to send the person back across um I will say that after the Department of Justice took off ozl things really it created this Gap in Mexico uh in the Gulf especially to where people are now vying for that um they they want to run it mhm like the satas were the enforcement arm for the cartel they did all the kidnapping they collected all the quotas they did the torture and all that stuff well once ozl was taken off they're like well we should be running this show and then sen Loa cartel is like we're coming in and taking over and Ms they things like we're taking over and then the Mexican military is like no we are and and and uh my understanding after I left is the deals where we were like fighting to get somebody released before their phone died um now they're just they're just cutting people's heads off wow they don't even care so what's you know when you're in that situation though and you're dealing with the cartels you know very very dangerous people um not an appreciation for life like correct uh you know the mindset like what what are you thinking are you fully in character or are are you you know knowing that you're still Scott and you've got to act like Bob so with for me um and we we teach this as well um or I still doing the trainings I put on now I try to be as close to me as I can M you know because that's me right right if if if I may not I may or may not be married I may or may not have kids I may or may not be a musician and a singer but you can bet I'll probably lift weights and I'll ride a motorcycle every now and then you you know um so I try to stay towards that I will I will say for me personally if I was doing anything to where let's say it's like a murder For Hire type deal or you're dealing with somebody that stone cold where you're not trying to build a rapport and be buddies that's where I would change my personality the most because I I'm I'm generally a happy go-lucky guy jovial uh love connecting with people of all sizes shapes colors educational level you know um monetary level doesn't matter to me but yeah so if you're dealing with I didn't deal with a cartel so much undercover as I did as a case agent but when you're dealing with those types of people you just got to be on your p's and q's you know you gota you gota um I mentioned this earlier but you you have to you have to be able to see if a situation is deteriorating and it could start deteriorating very quickly um as an undercover and you can have as many cover teams as you want watching you MH but the the real deal is if if if it's going to hit the fan there could be three SWAT teams outside that door I can show you so many tactical videos where they're on the other side of the door bad guy comes in it's a rip he turns he gets eight shots off before they can even get through the door wow so not trying to scare you or or scare you know people doing undercover um but usually we know it's just kind of you're on your you're on your own to a sense yeah absolutely I mean so you're in macallen are you going over the Border back and forth um it's very no no I mean you can but it's there's a I'll give you an example I've got mentors of mine who have now retired um and they did Undercovers in Miami like early 90s late 80s they were hopping on cigarette boats and going right over to Cuba and going you cannot do that now yeah I mean there's so much red tape and headquarters would shut it down and probably right P so right you know who's your cover team but uh yeah it was case agent W like I said the undercover stuff I did there my main undercover I was doing during the time in macallen is when I went in the Outlaws but so I wasn't I wasn't undercover in Mallen but I was undercover in Massachusetts so I would fly I see so that's that's kind of how it worked for me on the border and so uh what year did you uh join the Allies uh that would have been some somewhere around like 2005 to 2007 and 8 okay so between 2005 20078 you you join what's that process how does that happen um well I'll tell you I I'll tell you join is probably not the correct word because the the a lot of the your normal mm MO is you hang out um you become a probate uh if you make it through probation you get your cut um on that particular case we were working uh and don't get me wrong I I would love to have a cut and I I what a cut uh your I'm sorry yeah I'm talking as if everybody knows 1ent biker World um or just the biker world that's your leather vest okay so like if you're the Outlaws uh The Outlaws have their leather cut and their their um their mascot it's the cross Pistons with the skull and the skull is Charlie um and then there's history always going going way back but what we did as a team is and again I would have loved to have have uh a cut but over the last 30 40 years there are so many law enforcement officers that have infiltrated um biker gangs and gotten the cut but the case didn't go well or maybe they lost themselves or just there's so many variables especially when you're dealing with violent people that can turn like that you know it's just uh I thought I thought around 200 sixish I'm like man I'm in the I'm not even in the middle of my career yet and I'm already doing one of these cases I man I want to have like four of these done you know and what I found as the years went on is this very the Stars really have to align to be deep undercover in a violent group where things could just happen somebody gets murdered somebody finds out the source is a source and they beat them up or you just just something happens to where even the FBI is like we're out we're closing this case we're not doing it and that's kind of what started happening over the years several of them I started again but for whatever reason um that worked really well in the Outlaws and what I did is I hung out um I I let them kind of see me get myself known and and then I never joined they asked me to join but I never joined because I was portraying a uh high ranking uh member of an international theft ring so anything that was stolen um me and my truckers were moving it to Mallen in the border which I knew all about you know because they did they would would they would bring stuff down and trade it for dope trade guns for dope with the cartel and vice versa and then you always had some not all but you always there was always an element of corruption around the Border whether it be a Small Town Police Department with only four people uh you know and then you know you're only making $5 to $20,000 a year and the cartel says hey I'll give you 10 to 15 grand anywhere from 5 to 15 grand uh for you to just turn your head for three minutes and let me drive through yeah that's that's a sometimes that's hard to to to go up against yeah no absolutely like what what when you start though like you walk in the bar the biker club like what what's the uh who makes the connection not necessarily the person's name but like how do how do you even go about doing something like that um well what you hope for is that your case team has great intelligence so if you're coming in as an undercover hopefully they've already been on these people long enough to say hey that guy right there he is an attention you know ho he he's got to have attention he loves to be surrounded by big guys that's good stuff to know cuz back then I was running about 64 280 whatever pounds um and of course in Massachusetts as soon as I open my mouth with this accent people are like where are you from you know so you can use that I use that to my advantage and uh what I did is I was I was at the bar they usually hang out at and then I just kind of got to know people and do my thing and then uh the night they came in now you know who the hell is that guy on that's that's text he comes up here all the time and then things start happening and you know somebody yells something at you you send the drink back and forth uh and then uh next thing you know you're invited to the Northeast Regional you know Meetup and then you go into a sea of black leather and testosterone and everybody's looking at you like who the hell are you and the more people you meet the more scrutiny more scrutinized you are and uh yeah so that's kind of how I did it almost like a hanger that's what they would call that hang around but then somewhere in all that and again they have to be predicated so you got to realize in the undercover world the the evidence is usually so overwhelming I'm telling you 99.9% of the people I've ever been on undercover against they all plead guilty because the only thing they can really do the defense can really do is either claim entrapment or uh try to make you look like a bad person on the stand um so yeah so you you kind of infiltrate them in a way you're you're you're on the phone hey John you want to go hang out uh let's go grab a beer um and then you start making deals how does that work so that's what I was trying to get to I go off on tangents I apologize but um they they have to be predicated right like if I have if we have no evidence that you've ever dealt dope or nothing like I can't come up and start talking I mean that's we can start getting an entrapment issues there you know so hey you're broke and I'm offering you 30 grand to move this kilo I kind of trapped you there right so a lot of these uh members were already predicated on dope deals and stuff and arrest that they they had seen there um but really there wasn't a whole lot I had to wait for because as soon as I said I was from macallen Texas uh the president of the of that chapter said how much can you get a kilo for and can you bring me one and I'm like well that was fast yeah uh so as as time went on in that case uh you know they start finding out that I actually do some illegal stuff too you know and then and then they start seeing some things I do whether it's you know a truck loaded and it all started with them they were doing Insurance scams where they would report their motorcycle or car stolen sell it to me for a price they don't know what I'm getting for it in Mexico right and then uh I supposedly take the vehicles all down to Mexico and they get their insurance money and then it started like that but once once we started gaining trust with people next thing you know there's a legit car jacking which is a pretty serious crime yeah um and they need to get rid of that vehicle that was carjacked but it has um it wasn't OnStar back then I think it was called lowjack or something like that way back then right um and they're like hey this thing's got a tracker on it well don't worry about it you know we got this and and then you start gaining more trust and then there's like a there was a time where a Hell's Angel president uh was shot and killed uh in bridgport Connecticut and another Hell's Angel was with him and he got shot but he didn't didn't die and he was able to say hey it was a green pickup truck with Florida plates well we knew that Florida members were up you know and then I'm on the phone with them while the while the case team in Boston is running a wir tap which is not like TV you can't just call and say I want to tap this phone that is not how it works it's like 80 page affidavits it's got to get all kinds of levels of approval every 15 days you have to do updates it's only good for 30 days and you're always starting back over but they're running that and and we're calling and try to find out hey what can I find out and they're like hey you might want to stay out it's pretty hot right now I'm like if I come in can you hook me up with the vest and stuff because I don't want to be flying on a plane with that and and you just keep gaining more trust and eventually we led to the point to where uh again predicated but we led to a point to where we did a uh uh a drug protection we had 40 kilos of cocaine real 1,000 lbs of weed and and they they met other Undercovers and and uh cuz they the whole thing was is the the president especially wanted wanted a pipeline into uh a drug Supply his math and business skills were not that great because he's thinking if a if a kilo in in Deep South Texas cost $13,000 he thinks he can pay me $113,000 for that kilo and I'm like why do you think the kilos up here cost around 25 to 30 grand I go it's because you got to bring it from Texas you're not getting it for 13 right but uh that's what we did uh everybody wanted to take the case Rico if you would have done a RICO prosecution for that case after the two years that I was undercover and probably the three plus they worked on it um we could have wrapped in a lot more members from Florida all the way up but it just didn't it didn't go that way with the United States attorney's office yeah I remember the The Outlaws um there was an MMA fight uh in California that I was supposed to be at I ended up not not being there and one of the Outlaws I had met the guy in I think Ohio at another fight he was really nice guy fighter uh I liked him and uh he met my mom and he was very ni he he was very nice guy and um he was fighting in in in California and he was getting beat up and the Outlaws ended up uh starting a fight in the audience and like people were stabbed and it was like a it was a a big thing I'm I'm not sure if someone was killed but may have been it was been 20 years yeah but um that was my first like experience with like it can go violent real fast yeah like the great people I'm hanging out look I made a lot of friendships and they were I mean other than they they they didn't know they were making friends with an undercover FBI agent but it was pretty much me you know uh and there were some friendships that were pretty serious and deep you know during that two years but again you could be out um it reminds me of being out with some of the white supremacists that are just you know you're you're hanging out one minute um and the next minute bam you just matter matter of fact up in the Northeast there was a a gang called FSU stands for [ __ ] [ __ ] up all they did was go to bars and fight their whole thing was fighting a lot of them were Outlaws really yeah it was a crossover so you never know like you'd go they'd go to a a like a say it's a metal thing or like a you know some kind of Mosh Pit type thing yeah well they'd go in there and they'd send somebody small in or somebody that's not as intimidating start the fight and then when the other people start fight fighting that one I there's videos of it I mean it's just you don't even realize everybody on the wall is all FSU and they come in and just start smashing what's the point just to fight people I guess yeah that's that's crazy yeah um so yeah so like talk about the Friendship thing because you know if you're going undercover and I'm guessing you know you might like somebody like that's he's a good dude I he's doing all this bad [ __ ] but he's still a good dude yeah you know like what what is that like in your mind do you ever feel uh bad or anything like that yeah absolutely um you you yourself personally you've got to figure out how you're going to rationalize it in your mind so it doesn't have a negative impact on your psyche right but uh especially the outlaw case is probably the out of all the ones I've done and it's not like I've I've done there's let me say this right here right now um I have mentors I have peers I have people I've mentored there are guys and gals out there that have done way more than me um and then they've gone through more harrowing stuff than me um and they're not they're not on here for whatever reason so but I always want to pay respect and then you know just know it's a coming from a a humble Place sure but um tell me again oh say what's it like with the with the Friendship friendship yeah so on that twoe case there was one guy uh in particular and his name was Scott and he wasn't a patch member uh either but everybody in the Outlaws respected him and he had some working ties with Mafia stuff too but uh he and I just bonded I it was I mean we were like like they say man it's cliche right two P's in a pod it's just like man I'm like we would finish each other's sentences work out together drink together um I mean even got to the point to where you're not going to put him in the operations plan for the FBI but like people would be like hey is Scott going to be out there with you tonight and I'd go yeah and then everybody would go okay cool CU they knew he would fight for me and take a bullet for me and vice versa really um but you know uh this is this is in the book and and when I go teach the law enforcement stuff I I do a block surrounding this this time because what ended up happening is I I I found my threshold during over a three-year period I work myself too hard and well for me I met my threshold I I stopped taking care of myself and I crashed but during this case um he and I I mean really we bonded and it's it's again you see it I mean we get trained in it you should know better uh but I I was treated better by the Outlaws than the FBI a lot of times you know I had I don't know my first or second shoulder surgery at that time um the day of my surgery I had five M five messages from one of the case team members and and they knew I was in surgery they were just like hey when you get this you need to do this you need to do this you need to do this and I'm like what the f you know and uh what I'm getting on the next Tail cuz next tailes were big back then I get Hey brother I'm just checking on you how's things going how's your shoulder you know I love you brother I love you too you know and you're like it's not like I'm going to turn bad and go to the dark side against the FBI but yeah it's tough and then as the years went on in other cases um you know some I never really liked anybody but but I have to usually if especially it's going to go long term for me I have to bond with somebody sure you know and uh yeah I saw one I did I did one in Tennessee for a year and a half and that was a full-time one and uh probably about five or so years ago um Everybody played guilty on that I think we arested like 52 people um but somebody sent me a an obituary and it was the main guide infiltrated man and it you know you see it and it's like ah man it's just a somber feeling you know cuz yeah I mean you spend time with them but again you have to know um there's several things you can do but what you you can break this down you need somebody you need an accountability buddy we call them contact agents but you need somebody who's watching over you for the whole purpose of your psyche that's it they're not connected to the case because you'll get that stereotypical which has happened for many many moons where say it's a smaller department or whatever you got one person undercover their contact agent is also the case agent which is also the person that's going to benefit from this case so all they want is for you to succeed no matter what they're not looking out for your best interest and you being a type A we're not going to stop right I'm not going to stop same with a lot of your military friends and stuff and my friends same thing tactical guys we're going in I'm not stopping you know and and if you apply that that Warrior mentality type thinking if you apply that to everything in your life it can be detrimental so uh yeah you do you definitely make friendships and you just have to know you know where that line is and and maybe maybe let's just say for the outlaw thing we're getting ready to do that 40 kilo th000 lb deal and this guy who told me he has four daughters he almost went to jail um looking at serious time he got out of it he's not doing this stuff anymore wanted in and maybe you know it's not like I'm saying hey I'm FBI or I'm saying you don't do this you're not doing this no but because that would be wrong I'd be over stepping my bounds but I can look at you and go why are you doing this right I mean why are you you mean you told me you got four daughters what are you doing I mean you don't have to do this for our friendship that's I'm telling you no I'm in okay gotcha did you ever uh have somebody that wanted to do something and you said hey you shouldn't do this and they they didn't do it they ever take your advice well I've slowed people down MH I mean that was that was the white suprem one of the white supremacy cases I they they ready to go kill somebody like that week if if we wouldn't have found out that they were planning a murder plot I literally would have showed up to a campsite and I would have found out right then hey leave your cell phones we're all getting ready to go murder somebody which is going to be like okay I'm not leaving my cell phone do we blow the whole case right now how do we do this is the team coming in so yeah um but I'm trying to think like on a on a personal level yeah I find it very interesting like the personal level because you know uh to me human connection is the most important thing and whether someone's a you know there's a lot of uh reasonably good people that are doing bad things you know and so I could imagine probably the hardest part for me would be caring for someone and knowing that you know you're undercover you've got your job they're doing something very illegal and they need to be held responsible but also like wanting the best for them overall too so that's got to be a hard thing for the psyche love a success story and and as a law enforcement officer pretty much my entire career when I sit somebody down at the table I tell them uh with the exception of maybe a pedophile but I tell them i' go hey I'm not saying I think you're a bad person MH I'm not saying I just agree with what you did what I'm saying is is you're an adult and you made a choice to commit a crime and now you're caught so let's just start here I do that all the time and I'll tell people I'm like man matter of fact there's one now that I'm retired that I helped get arrested who was a white supremacist he's now flipped um I ended I made sure it was okay with the assistant United States Attorney and the United States attorney's office but I did a letter uh on behalf of his um character nice for his sentencing and cuz I said man as long as you're doing the right thing I'll do anything I can to help you you know and there's very few things in law enforcement career that I've loved more than a success story from somebody learning from their mistakes turning their life around for the better yeah you know um and now this one particular guy he was worried about having a felony on his record trying to get a job I said well who better to be your your you know you know your uh uh somebody that they can call than the guy who helped get you arrested right you know yeah if you're doing the right thing um but yeah and I'll tell them I go look look at me I'm not a I am not a cookie cutter FBI guy right I'm then I had tattoos when I came in Hoover would have never hired me you know but uh and and I committed all kinds of crimes growing up I just didn't get caught right there was a funny moment at the sheriff's office when I got hired at they had this sheet and it basically said something to the effect of circle any of the following crimes you've ever committed even if you never were caught well I was just being honest I mean I circled public indecency DUI malicious damage Petty lony I mean I was circling all kinds of stuff and they were like are you serious and I'd go yeah and I told them all the stories and I don't know maybe they thought I was it was good that I was being honest but you know they let you through so yeah so I can connect with again and you know you look at your family and this that and the other it's yeah I I I try to unless it's time to be unrespected you know like if they if they've done something like that but I try to be uh respectful and you know going through this book writing process I never coined it this way but my friends who are my literary agents um they termed it this way they said you know you refuse to dehumanize people and I was like you know what that's a great way to say it because say you're writing a book and then the cowriter is like these stupid idiots and blah blah blah and I read it and I go no take the stupid idiot part out and they're like what I mean what they're and I go they're people too yeah that's somebody's dad somebody's son somebody's husband whatever you know yeah absolutely yeah um yeah it's a really interesting part cuz I don't think people think about the mental impact it has for the undercover agents that you know your people too you have this human connection that goes beyond a criminal and a uh a cop it's more of human being to human being and U it's got to play a you know play with your emotions in a way the more time you spend with them and and living with them and yes yeah street level stuff I'm going to pop into your house some going make a buy and leave I don't have to get super connected with you three buys were're hitting you with the search warrant that kind of thing but yeah longterm or I mean look a lot of your cases a lot of your Undercovers you I mean it might take six months just to get everything set up to start getting to know people and some of your cases you we have enough predication to open the case it goes through legal review and everything but we're not positive especially on the white supremacy realm right or even the militia realm because it's it's your first amendment right there could be thousands and thousands people on this telegram you know wire whatever gab what they can spew all kinds of hate they can say I hate every black person I hate every brown person I want them all to die that's not illegal M so we might be infiltrating them because there's been a lot of rhetoric and and people are saying hey you need to look at this but I might be in there for four months and find out look this just talk they're not going to go do anything um but that whole time you're building relationships right yeah so yeah it can it can be it can be very tricky um I've just always stayed close to who I am because the way I was taught um and I agree with this is if you pretend to be something completely opposite of what you are for a long period of time one or two things is going to happen you're either going to become it or you're going to slip up and get caught so I've always just tried to be close to who I am which is why I probably never got called for a Wall Street gig or the you know if there is there there five star hotels and more I don't know I was always in the backwoods that's awesome you got your book uh coming out uh in March of 2025 pel horse what are some of the stories uh just talk about the vocation what's it about and and what was the goal of it uh well uh what is the goal of it I guess well the goal first of all I never wanted to do it um all I ever wanted to do when I retired cuz uh and you've met some mutual friends it started with Glenn because I've been around wrestling my whole life um I've known the head of security for WWE I take church kids and stuff backstage stuff like that but when Glenn was running for mayor um I met John T and then after that John T gets Richie and they start going in and you know how it is it's like hey man you got some good stories let's let me introduce you this person and then by the time the Rolling Stones article came out um we started getting hit by everybody um you know all the big you know companies Leonardo DiCaprio um Scarlett Johansson um you know amlin entertainment Steve Spielberg all this stuff and that's when the uh literary agents were calling Rolling Stone and I'm like I don't want to do a book I mean I just the way I saw it is like I don't want to go around every town and you know and and they convinced me um look man you're this is your legacy for your family um you know you can tell your stories and the way I saw it is I was like look I'm basically doing what I already do I go around and I teach and I speak it at conferences and and wherever uh you know even through the FBI um over the attrition you Tau in front of thousands upon thousands of officers hundreds and hundreds of civilians cuz we have Outreach Citizens Academy but when I got on the phone with them it was basically I'm just going to keep telling my stories and and there's going to be a code writer and we're going to put it to paper and it turns out that they' also done some books of some some of my mentors who were uh retired FBI and had bestseller books and stuff so I called them to make sure and uh we decided to do it um but as we're doing it I'm just telling my stories right and then it kind you start you start I'll tell you what happened for me I w't say you start but what happened for me is my eyes just started getting more open like instead of being Brash and going somebody coming up who may not understand our side of the world and they ask some questions that I may think are completely idiotic you know like you know with our military friends and and and you know the Tactical people were like what you have no idea what Evil's out here like Mexico you mentioned it's a different value of life people just don't understand that right um and uh but the old Scott would have been like you're an idiot you need to go back home and live in your bubble and be happy we're out here on the wall not to get all you know Jack Nicholson on you but be happy we're out here then I started realizing I didn't really do a whole lot of good and you get involved with these huge groups like eradicate hate and I'm like well let me just listen and as we said before how do you bring people back towards the middle right you know this whole in my opinion if you're far right you're not smart if you're far left you're not smart it's just too much hate yes uh let's bring everybody back together you know again like I made the joke like hey uh it's okay for you to like something I don't it's okay for me to like something you don't we still be friends right do you eat do you like food me too so let's start there we got something in common um but the book what it covers is uh it's just like chapter one's a synopsis of me growing up you know some funny stories about my family in high school and looking back it was really the first undercover I ever did but I didn't realize I was undercover at the time you know yes not in law enforcement but in high school right uh trying to find out who had damaged theice uh the vice principal's house and spaint spray painted it with a bunch of you know uh racist stuff and whatnot and then chapter two is me as a cop becoming a vice narcotics investigator some pretty scary things street level deals three and on is all FBI undercover um because what I didn't like I've read a lot of books from retired agents in Undercover and if you're saying that the book's undercover and it's about undercover and it takes you to chapter 10 to start talking about undercover well what are we doing right or in the middle I throw in one of my case agents cuz I we got I've been blessed to be on some big cases or running some big investigations that had great impacts uh in there uh and wherever we were at but as this as as we started getting more and more into the book I was getting asked what you just asked me what is the goal of the book what are you trying to say with the book and I'm like I'll just tell my stories and then uh after again getting involved with so many people that eradicate hate and these wonderful people who have gone through some horrific things um from extremism um lost family members uh the Tree of Life Massacre you know the Buffalo Massacre um all these things it just started hitting me um I'm like man this is cliche and does it make it sound like I'm too soft cuz no I'm not too soft but it's like man look stop hating yeah hate takes so much energy yes and it's not rewarding hardly ever if if ever you know and and it takes a lot of energy and it just drains you but if you spread love it's almost instantly gratifying yeah and and I'm we're going to put it in the book but there was a a quote from Martin Luther King that just ran true and I'll probably butchered a little bit because I don't have it in front of me but uh um it says something to the effect of hate cannot drive D out hate only love can do that um Darkness cannot drive out Darkness only light can do that I think I said it backwards but that's that's that's kind of the message and you're like okay yeah let's just bring people you you get on these phones and I teach a whole block on radicalization of teens online now I have personal experience because I've infiltrated the white supremacy side and the militia side but I have peers or mentors or people I've mentored that have infiltrated the radical Muslim side or whatever it's all they get on and you start diving into those rabbit holes on your phone late at night and uh I think as humans most of us want to belong to something you want to feel you have that need to belong um and it goes back to the 80s gangs or Cults they're going to find somebody maybe from a broken home uh you don't have a lot of friends maybe you're a social outcast maybe you can't find a partner maybe you've been bullied those were the ones I kept running into I know there's all kinds of other avenues but those are the ones I kept running into that would find this extremist hate and now they can bond with something else I mean look at what um uh it's escaping my mind right now what they're incels have you have you heard of those what that so incels are basically white supremacist but incel is short for involuntarily celibate so here's the belief system uh the shooter at the Aurora uh movie theater he was an inel okay they were really concerned about a lot of people were concerned about the movie The Joker because uh with walking Phoenix because that character itself painted what kind of like an incel is so they they cannot score basically to break it down simple terms they can't hook up yeah um that's that they they physically can but they choose not to well they try to get a girlfriend and nobody wants to date them I see right or a partner but it's usually girlfriend and then they take that and turn the hate even more so now they're involuntarily celibate not voluntary involuntarily celibate so now they hate the women and they push this ideology to where well we're going to kill all women which still leaves you not hooking up I don't I'm like how don't you there's a group of people that believe that yeah yeah incels in I'm sorry incels wow and then some of the groups I was in that were white supremacy a couple of them weren't too far from being inels what what is what what are the conversations with them like I mean they're just mad and angry and just deeped hate obviously for yeah uh they talk rape a lot they like they want to rape people well they can't they can't they can't yeah have sexual intercourse any other way that's why I'm trying to not to just say get laid it's okay they can't get laid right so they talk R so they they have this hate for women yeah and it's all the women's fault yep um and they don't look at themselves and say oh well maybe you know if I were my fault yeah it's it's all it's it's a victim they're playing a victim yeah a professional victim y so do you just want to beat them up all the time well I would if I saw them in public I'd be like Scot the old Scott yes yeah 15 20 years ago we're spreading love now but I'm just saying might want to beat these guys up I want I want to I want to spread love in the way of punching and slapping that's right uh I want to slap the love into you right uh but yeah so you know one of the white supremacy groups I was in which was the the main thing for the uh article which is also the book ends of the book right the book The reason it's called and again I don't get to pick everything we put it on the table you've got these brainiacs that look at algorithms and all for for titles but code name pale horse pel horse was my moniker and the violent white supremacy group called the Bas okay um so it kind of starts with that because that's what really the Rolling Stones article was about it starts with that it did get a lot of coverage all over the world because there was members from all over the world and it starts with that and then it ends with that kind of like how did I become Pale Horse and that's the Journey of the book and and and so the base um how did how did that it start that you infiltrated you know them so that would be uh kind of a kind of a typical kind of a typical deal in law enforcement especially on the domestic terrorism side right um like I told you earlier there can be thousands of people in there spewing hate how do we watch them all how do we know which one's going to go and do a lone wolf thing we don't nobody has a crystal ball so we might proactively go after them and we were getting reports from overseas or working or World working part saying hey we've got these people over here that are members of the base looks like they're kind of in the United States and uh I started I the team picked me I mean I was kind of on the team too but I I'm willing to do it um uh no better than anybody else you know there's plenty of people in that chain that could have done it but we all know each other right because it's like if you have uh not to get off on a tangent but let's just say in the FBI you've got 600 certified undercover agents well when you ask how many of you have been the primary Undercover on an undercover operation that dwindles down and say how many have you been the primary Undercover on more than one but less than five it dwindles down even more when you say over five or over 10 you're down to like a core probably 30 to 50 people and we all know each other so I would get a lead on something or a white supremacy case or something and I'd be like hey I can't do it I just had my text group hey no need to respond if you're not available we got a hot one Colorado Springs blah blah blah if you're available hit me back and then we would work at that way so with that one I went on they were posting all over gab which was an app um and it's kind of like a bunch of posting pictures and stuff kind of Facebook is but not really um because it had different groups I mean they literally had 14 words as a group well that's the 14 words that is Renown in white supremacy it's David Lane coined it I'll butcher it but it's something that we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children kind of thing um that's the 14 words and then they had whites only a group like that so you go in you can see them posting about training and stuff and I started responding um next thing you know I start getting emails and I'm being ask all kinds of questions and I'm answering those questions and after about a week of back and forth questions I was told to download the app wire um let them know when I got it uh set up the account and then in and wire you can do um voice to voice as well as posting and stuff so something like a Snapchat kind of thing and uh I I went through about an hour and 15 minute interview with like a five person panel asking me and I could hear some of were young you know and I could hear some of them were older um and and I passed I passed their uh their their sniff test and 24 hours later they said hey we'd like to have you in the base if you'd be willing to be a member and I said absolutely and then they said where are you located I said East Tennessee and they said um uh we'll get uh a leader of the sale closest to you you'll be contacted they set themselves up um I never was able to confirm um if the lead purposely cuz he denied it but Al-Qaeda mhm in English is the base interesting and they setel up just like Al-Qaeda they wanted three to five man celles c l LS with my redneck accent I don't know if it's coming across different but Sals all over the world for that call and what they called bugaloo which would be D-Day which would mean the collapse of society and the big thing with this group is and again I'll go out and speak and and and teach uh on white nationalism from the KKK days all the way up to right now and this is not the KKK this is this is not burning crosses and you go and do a March this is they are accelerationists um James Mason is a longtime white supremacist he created Adam wafin division he did the book called Siege and a lot of it is guilla Warfare type tactics a lot of accelerationism and the base was huge into Siege culture is what they called it so what it essentially it means this they don't believe that there's a political solution to save the white race they believe that Society is either going to collapse on its own or from man-made events and they want to speed it up H like one of the members who's now serving a lot more time in jail than he was because he did some heinous things once he got in jail after we arrested him um me picked up a lot more charges in years uh he told me he goes hey I voted for Hillary Clinton now here I am with a bunch of white supremacist and I'm like why he said because if she came in he said uh they would start taking money away from police the military wouldn't get as much there's going to be rights there's going to be in his mind if he if he voted her in it would speed up the collapse of society H and so they're they're worried about saving the white race that's their yes what's the like what's their philosophy on that it always ends up excuse me I'm going to make that chair squeak it always ends up or I just most of the time it ends up in in them having their own ethn state does that mean the entire white United States is white no there were groups uh the group I was in the CES I was in was looking at setting up um a compound basically an ethnostate in the Appalachian Mountains we had a group in the base that were looking at the upper peninsula in Michigan we had a group that were looking at the Pacific Northwest um but essentially you would be it would be a compound and you would have your own schooling and training and and I I don't know there's not a lot of I guess you could say forethought and afterthought right there's not a lot because you know huge neonazi huge Hitler um which always kind of amused me because I've I've done a lot of stuff around the far-left and and socialist and stuff like that but I've had good friends that they're they're more set to do those Undercovers while I'm over here with the other people doing what I do or we did but if you start up here and you've you got far left socialist and you got far right socialist and they go down they meet right back that they want the same thing they want everything paid for they want this that and the other and and I would ask them you know we'd be on a 5 hour hike or something I'd be like so we're neo-nazis yeah yes we're so we're accelerationist yes so who's going to be Hitler and they all kind of look at each other and I said well only one of us can be Hitler they can't be like five Hitlers who's going to be the leader when all this baby goes down you know so it's just things to think about but it's for me it's amusing cuz I'm kind of like I'm trying to you know point out to yeah point out to them you know I mean some of these kids believe that the Earth is uh flat some of these kids believe that the Earth is concave they believe hugely in a hollow Earth and that Hitler's still alive living in the middle of the Earth with agarthans and there were some other name with like giant people and I started you know we'd be drinking and I'd kind of just poke at them I'd be like really 15t tall they're like yeah and I go well what are they waiting on why are they still down there right you know um yeah I know right but to tie it back into incels um later on in the undercover investigation I'm like you know I know ethnos State I know we're going to set up our own thing we're going to run this baby it's going to be ours the white race is going to Prevail we always do um kind of thing I'm doing my doing my part and I said but you know I haven't heard any of you guys talking about how we're going to procreate I said cuz I got a lady but she's not for share M and they started giggling a little bit and we're talking 20 year olds and older are like well we're just going to rape the women and I'm like okay and I look at the one dude who's got a girlfriend and we kind of smirk at each other and I said they go what's the funny I said you guys don't have a lot of experience with women do you yeah and they're like what do you mean and I go I'm saying it might work for a little while but at some point you're going to have to go to sleep and you might wake up missing parts you went to bed with you know I said I'd give that whole rape thing another thought you know uh um but again they've probably D do Dove down some deep dark hole and black metal and whatever and a lot of Satanism um not knock and Satanist it's not my belief system but um a lot of that you start diving into those accelerationist groups usually somewhere in there there will be somebody that's messing around with order of nine angles which is another huge white supremacy group but really satanic really yeah so I mean you know you hear a lot of different things uh in the media um you know to me and you can correct me here uh I feel like they throw the title white supremacist around a lot when a lot of it isn't um you know how many actual white supremacists do you think there are in the United States and do you agree that they actually throw the title around uh sometimes but it's not oh I believe they throw it around way too much but that kind of goes with this whole cancel culture and W culture stuff you know it's hard to disagree with anybody on anything now without being I mean or just not even disagree and just having your own opinion you know some free thinking uh right that you talk about right free thinking and then all of a sudden everybody's like well you hey back off man um but yeah I think it's thrown around a lot but I mean you know if if you're a certain media outlet and you are catering or or bantering for the type of people you want watching you you're going to say certain things and same on the opposite side right um but let's take for instance January 6 I can't tell you how many calls I've been on not just how many times I've heard it on on social media or or mainstream Media or just TV in General on calls where I'm being uh like they're pitching us right hey we would like to do a TV show a documentary kind of thing and and they're just saying it was all white supremacist on January 6 I go no no no no that was militia that's anti-government that's that's 3centers and again let me let me paint a picture for you 3centers aren't illegal 3ers like there are militia groups is in the Constitution and where we're at and Tennessee man you see 3er stickers everywhere you see the Gadson flag on license plates doesn't mean they're white supremacist it doesn't mean they're they're super anti-government just a lot of times it just means they love the Constitution and they love their guns and usually they love God MH um and they's not they're not saying they're going to do anything unless cops stop arresting people unless you have to take care of your own unless somebody comes and try to take their guns yeah you know um I think gets thrown around and get bit but it's it's due to lack of knowledge cuz every time I've been on a call whether it's a it's a far-left person or whatever they just don't know right so you spread that knowledge it's just like me talking to somebody and them saying and by the way this was at eradicate hate with a very high highly successful well-known defense attorney and they said well I just don't understand why they could have just shot that guy in the leg and I looked at her and I said I've got a I said in all your years you do you not know what the force continu is for deadly force and they're like no what are you talking about and I'm like well you don't you don't just pull a weapon out and point it at somebody unless it's a deadly force situation and I had to explain that to them and I did it in a nice way and then they everybody walked away from the table like wow that's just spreading what you know and then kind of bringing people to the table no I hear what you're saying but in my experience this yes and and they don't know I said we can't shoot to MIM that's a lawsuit you can't this is not the Wild Wild West right you know you resist this much then the office can use this much you use this much resistance then they can use this much if you get to the top of that triangle whether they I've heard they've changing it now and it's not a force continuum it's just a whatever but it's still the same thing yeah if I'm pulling my gun out and and you know I'm easing the slack off the trigger I'm giving you commands it's a deadly force situation yeah how much you think you know right now is just people not having knowledge like that for instance um like putting labels I mean you know you look at everything we've been through the last four years years with Co and those type of things and through that if you didn't put a black box on Instagram or whatever you are a racist you don't support black lives matters you're a racist if you don't support biological men competing in female sports you're a transphobe you know it's either this or that if you think this way you're a trump supporter you think that way you're a Biden supporter and I I had a a post a few years ago where uh in the comments I I got called a leftwing libtard and a right-wing conspirac conspiracy theorist I'm doing pretty good cuz you're in the middle yeah there we go you're Aver out yeah yeah but um you know talk a little about that because we are seeing right now in society hearing that there's groups that are like ready for it to all in and you know swoop in with their guns and stuff uh it seems like if we don't get a grip and have some common sense we could be headed that way absolutely I I I truly believe that now I've been retired since June of 21 um I still continued working with the bureau pretty extensively for six months after that so let's just say up until 2022 um I don't have my thumb on the pulse anymore with the exception of I'm involved with groups like eradicate hate or I go and teach at the Tennessee gang conference or for roci I or or these big organizations where I'm interacting with people who are on the ground right now still working this stuff um but yeah that's that's my thought process if we don't come back towards the middle and we don't get some common sense I will say that I I won't say that it will happen but I'll say that the odds for it and the um the ability for it to happen is pretty strong you have a you have a lot of people who are quiet and they are well stocked on weapons now there's some that train every weekend now is that who you want making a tactical entry not from what I've seen from most of them but it's still a person with a gun and like I've said to in interviews and and and wherever um you there's not a bowler plate pitcher right you can't look at a picture and go oh that's a white supremacist right oh and I usually tell people I go if I would have shown you a picture and and these are usually jacked up you know type A are like oh that person's a wimp you're going to scare them I go oh no no dead is dead let's get that straight right if I would have shown you a picture of the Colin Bine kids before Colin Bine happened what would you have said if you looked at their picture what would you have said of a picture of of I'm not going to say their names I I say them when I'm teaching Undercover because I have to explain what I'm doing but I don't want to you know in the Tactical world and and when we're out teaching active shooter stuff we don't want to mention the murderer's name cuz that's what they want so but let's just say the Charleston Church shooter if I would have shown you a picture of that kid what would you have said bold haircut tank top skinny holding a 45 the kid from Aurora orange yellow hair and this that and the other but man they still have the ability to kill yeah so you just got to be careful yeah and then I mean there's so many tangents we could go off on like mental health and this that and the other um but for me and I've said this at the eradicate hate conference and I'm like I am not a be allend all and I hope I don't come off that way um I'm just telling you my experiences but for me in 28 years of law enforcement and if I look Beyond before and after it all starts at home mhm it all starts at home well you think about you know in in all communi really like when there's not a father in the home yeah you know you have a lot more problems um uh that is actually one of the main things right now you know you look at one of the reasons I didn't support black lives matter is because if you looked at their website um you could tell it was a communist organization yeah it said that they wanted to do away with a nuclear family it's like well why would you want to separate the family we see you know what happened um uh when we brought in welfarism in the 1960s uh what happened in the black community separated them from uh you basically gave incentives to not keep a family um separate the kids from their fathers and you know now I forget the statistics but it's a you know very high fatherless rate in those homes and that to me is a number one cause actually of of a lot of those issues in those communities um why do you think though like whoever's pushing these buttons uh they have to know that not bringing family P together is a good thing I am I've heard you say this about yourself too I am not a conspiracy theorist um but it is a fact that our adversaries overseas China Russia they do put money into the states um and not just on white supremacy side they do it on the far left side and they pump money because they want chaos they want they want America yeah you know death to America they want all this stuff uh I think there's some of that um but I can also counter and tell you that some of the people I've arrested uh the father's there but they put blinders on I thought it was just a phase let me get this straight your 21y old son doesn't have a job he doesn't have a car uh but he's got an Arsenal in his closet he's wearing plate carriers to the equivalent of what the FBI wears um cry Precision expensive stuff uh and he's got own men coming to your 100 Acre Farm and training all the time wearing flectar camo because it's Germans pattern uh there's a there's a skull on his table with swastikas and runes nothing against the runes but you know a lot of your white supremacy groups are moving into that paganism movement I've got plenty of friends that are pagans and they're pissed about it because it's like this is this is not what we are but right right next to the skull is Siege the book from James Mason and on on the other side is Myan comp from Hitler and you're telling me that you thought it was a phase yeah you know oh you put those thoughts in his head actually sir I did not right I was just as shocked as anybody else when your son said we were going to go murder people yeah I thought we were going to put up Flyers yeah well it's it's wild it's it's not just obviously the the father's not being the home it is turning a blind eye but um you know it does seem like there is some type of of of movement that is not open in public but it is open because we can see it happening yeah like we can see right now the division that's being caused we can see right now critical thinking and putting people in boxes and saying no you can't think in the middle as you're talking about you either going to be right here or right here you know if you agree with this you've got to be a Biden supporter if you agree with this you got to be a horrible person you know it's like this just throwing these stones and and we've lost our Humanity through it it seems yeah I I'm a firm believer in that I we were concerned about our kids you know going to school and and uh you know when I went to school uh the teacher's job was to present the facts and then the the students in the room might say well I I lean more to pro-life well I lean more to you know pro-choice well let's have a debate but we're not like burning stuff down you know or or you here's the facts not not me telling you the way I want you to know it and then skewing people that would be I would have an issue with that if somebody was doing that with with my family members yeah but it's just it's just division it's just Division and I'll tell you I'm a Believer right that's me I'm not trying to preach to anybody but uh you want to know how I made it through a lot of Undercovers my faith and even when I didn't have my faith my wife did you know um and I there are stories that I can tell you that I mean you say what you want but I know and she knows without a shadow of a doubt it was God right so whatever you believe in um but it's just evil is what's happening yes I don't care which belief system you got maybe you don't think there's such a thing as evil I'm pretty I I usually I have friends who are agnostic I have friends who are atheist and uh and it's like you know they don't believe there's a guy okay I got that okay do you believe in evil oh yeah I believe in evil absolutely so it EVs and flows but this whole division of oh I hate you I hate you it's me go back and watch some Bugs Bunny cartoon from back in the day not too far back cuz they not politically correct at all but you know like ' 80s 90s it's just somebody whispering in this ear did you hear what he just said about you are you going to take that and that same person goes the other side and goes guess what they're saying over there yeah and you're like and then the next thing you know is it's fistic cuffs right you know no it is it is to me uh good versus evil yeah you know I mean it's it's obvious that there are evil forces trying to push you know this agenda because you know they make take it to where if you speak out you're the bad guy for saying it and if you if you go against what is I'm going to call it po pop culture right now which I think a lot of just pop culture oh this this is the way you're supposed to think about this and if you if you don't put your Ukraine flag up there you're this and it's like I don't agree with any of it actually I I don't I'm not even thinking in those those ways but um you know I really do I think that it's it's good versus evil and you know that's why I pray a lot you know like it's a it's a uh multiple time a day you know type thing hey what do I do here I'm just going to trust you know but when I feel the evil um I I notice it I recognize it yeah you know and I think that we're seeing a lot of that right now in society so uh to kind of parlay off of that um you know generally uh historically what I've found and what I remember growing up kids and again this is before all the video games and stuff like they have today but before they're desensitized they are very sensitive and they can pick up on evil pretty damn quick it's the adults who can't because we've been so desensitized we've seen so many things right um and like you said if everybody says this is the norm now um and that's all you hear every day from every Outlet you go to yeah I can see you believe in it for sure you don't know there's anything different exactly you know um it could be somebody me from my world they believe in the life of crime because this this and this and they think they can do whatever they want and my argument always was one of my arguments was always don't hate me for being a law enforcement officer I'm a peace officer but my job is to enforce the law if you don't like the laws then just get them changed go change but but since I've retired there's plenty of places in the United States where they're just picking and choosing what laws they want to enforce and not yeah and depending on who the person is and I'm like well that's not that took away my whole argument cuz I don't even know what to tell you from that yeah that's that's wild the weaponization of the Department of Justice it's pretty obvious I mean you're seeing these political cases it's hard it's hard not to argue against well yeah it's just well so um my girlfriend's dad was us attorney for 20 plus years okay and um we talk about it he's like yeah it's obvious right now it has been weaponized and um he's a pretty middle middle of the road guy but um but even when you're doing your job doesn't matter whether you're left or right when you're doing your job as a law enforcement officer or as a US attorney or as a judge you have to be unbiased right I got to be I've set across the table for many of of child molesters my personal beliefs wouldn't do too well right but I'm trying to do a job and I'm unbiased and yes I can do that people may not believe you can do that but I can't no I mean if that's if that's what your job is you got to get in get the mindset you're in it for the right reasons you understand the importance of uh not having a bias and you know not and and that is what's so weird you know it seems to be in the media uh you know across the board within the justice department you know I think Trump ignited so much fear in people and I I like to say Trump likes to cut and poor salt in wounds and I never saw him deescalate deescalate or no diffuse anything and you know I liked a lot of his policies but and I have a lot of friends that are Trump supporters I wasn't one yeah and I said when he got elected that the left isn't going to be able to handle his rhetoric and it's going to cause ultimate civil unrest and you can ask my parents or my business Partners uh the first 3 years I'm like there's no way they're going to let him be president there's no way they're going to be let uh let him be president again they're going to do something to to get them out the economy is going to crash they something's going to happen crazy event and then in January 2020 I was like well guys I guess I was wrong you know I shouldn't be so and then you know March uh covid hits and you know I have some the almighty evil I mean what are the odds think about this what are the odds that a once in a 200e virus maybe even longer comes around during the most contentious presidential race in the history of our country probably one of them at least at least In Our Lifetime yeah what are the odds of that I I don't think like it would be astronomical if you were actually run it so that just happened to happen in March of 2020 when Trump were was going to be reelected the economy was going great things were going great uh you know overall except that the other side was so mad actually the world not just the other side Trump just smacked them all and cut them all pour salt in all the wounds what are the odds do you think that that just happened it's uh it's it's definitely a good argument you know I it's uh and and they've gone after him pretty hard but again he would never in my opinion wouldn't be quiet he the nanny nanny boo boo stuff I'm like come on you can see how that and like that was the part that was but he's a billionaire he is and I've been backstage with v McMahon many many times yeah and that's not a character that is him no I believe it it's just they make decisions and they make them that's it yeah it's just that you have to see that ultimately it's going to end you know it's going to end badly um well I'll picture this too say you're Entourage or your teams around you and let's just say you go out there and you do this nanny nanny boo boo stuff and you go backstage and it's the other old white guys going high five you spanked them you spanked them but if you're like me and a lot of my peers watching it we're going come on what did you you know right what what are we doing what are we doing and and again it's still csing division one way or another yeah well that and that's I mean the country was I'm going to say well compared to now it was just a little bit divided uh during Obama it wasn't that bad like and your militia started Rising back up during those eight years though because they were worried about gun loss okay that's where because they died out but that that eight years and it's not it's not aama's fault it's just you know what I'm saying that that belief system of they're coming to get our guns they're coming CU they actually said it on multiple occasions you know and then if you remember we're cracking down on guns and the next day the gun sales go through the roof because everybody's like buy them up boys you know girls I kind of like that you know um as far as we have a second amendment to protect us against the tyrannical government so the the fact that people are arming themselves as a right of a citizen I like that idea you take it too far obviously there's issues with that but you know so so yeah they were they were worried but then Trump got in office and he went hard in the paint and I mean I I appreciate how courageous he was in the sense that he stood up to what I consider some very evil people and things yeah I appreciated that part at the same time I wondered if it you know is it just courage or can he not see that you got to show show a little humbleness and real if you really want what's best for the world you want best for Humanity you want best for our kids and our grandchildren you know sometimes you'll say sorry sometimes you'll say I made a mistake yep sometimes you'll put put a hand out and say you know what it's yeah and it was you know he just pushed so hard I saw it coming the entire time like the guy there's no way I loved a lot of his policies there's no way that they're going to allow this guy to be in again and then you know then the co thing happened this time around like and and this is where it's weird I'm still not I wouldn't consider myself a Trump supporter uh I'll probably vote for him this time but I wouldn't consider myself a big supporter and but I can't I can't deny that they're going after him so hard on a bunch of bogus things yeah I mean the the rape trial uh that was you know that's a civil case but that's that was awful uh you know he didn't even uh the lady didn't even remember uh what year it happened yeah and but she's going to remember like give me a break I mean it was just you saw her on TV talking about you know well the double standards are the big issue for me I mean if you're going to do it let's do it fair across the board it goes back to the old remember the old story if you don't have enough candy for everybody in the room you can't have a piece right you know so just do it fair across the board yeah if the FBI says no beards that means nobody has a beard right period yeah you know but yeah that's U we're in a we're in a weird spot you know and I'm all I'm trying to do is you know um spread the knowledge that I've learned forward and I still learn yeah how do we bring people together though in this time do you think there's more people out there kind of like with our thought process uh process of it uh that realize that we need to come together like I think we're seeing more of it now simply because a lot of the left party has gone so far left yeah can you imagine if the right party went that far right it would be quite Supremacy is what it would be yeah you know what I mean so it people who are still left or people who are still right and I don't even want to call them moderate they're just not like way the hell off the page sure they're saying I mean like Bill Maher look at him how many when when Fox News is quoting Bill Mah all the time you're like he's like I'm still a Democrat right I've just stayed where I'm at so I think a lot of people are starting to see and and again uh if you're looking at election stuff and I'm no guru by any means but what's being talked about at the kitchen table bro I mean a a 6 o riby is 25 bucks but I can get the pork shoulder for 23 I guess I'm eating pork this week I retired at 50 because we get a pension but we have what's called a Thrift Savings Plan which is basically a 401k M um for me being a former cop not coming from a ton of money um having to earn everything you know um that was a sick amount of money that's why I retired at 50 it's nowhere near what it was yeah it's down 25% just in 3 years yeah and I'm like you know and shame on me for not catching the stocks going down but you know I take two weeks off I come back and it's in half so um we'll we'll see but for me uh with what I know and I know there's all kinds of things because again with eradicate hate and groups like that life after hate they've got they've got all kinds of Academia they've got this they've got other avenues but for me it's just about talking and not everybody can do that but let's just sit down and have a conversation let's just start there yeah I mean it's uh I was saying earlier that uh had one of our scientists here in Nashville a couple days ago and he's got uh say different political views on on how to do things uh than I do but I I love talking to him because he's really smart he's got uh two phds protein crystallography and theoretical chemistry yeah I don't know what those things are right yeah uh you know he's he's he's a uh older man uh let say about you know 75 and had a great great career and so but we can sit and talk you know I'm giving him my side on on this he's giving and I you know I learned a little bit I'm like oh this is good I I love learning I wouldn't have learned if we weren't able to have that conversation didn't have the you these days respect for each other to be able to have that uh conversation with different ideas but it seems like we're afraid of uh ideas that aren't popular yeah and and on that note I can waffle like quick I can come in and put it put it on the table and go this is what it is and this is why I believe this and then somebody like you said different view but we can talk they explain something I go H well based on that new knowledge I have I completely revers what I just said and that's that's that's how I've always worked I mean let's put everything on the table let's start poking holes at it like develop a case strategy let's come up with you let's pick the one that's the best it does you know work with people and this is what I used to say as a trainer um cuz we went through we went through uh these phases right and uh raising kids and I think every parent wants their kids to do better than them even if they had it good um but then we got to this whole thing where you had like um you know helicopter parenting fine that's what you want to do but if you're a trainer or a football coach or something like that a fighting coach or you know you're training firearms and tactics in in the FBI or at your Police Department you start seeing these uh the the culture change and then you see everybody gets a trophy and then you see nobody is really failing and then when they become an adult and they fail for the first time oh it's almost a nervous breakdown or the other side that we would see is I would just ask people when they would come into the bureau and I wasn't trying to be a complete ass or anything but I'm joke joking a little bit but I'd say have you ever played a team sport I break it down even more have you ever had to work with somebody else to accomplish a goal that's my first question my second question is have you ever failed at something cuz I started seeing in my personal opinion those were some huge issues yeah um and and a lot of times in these last several years the answer is no to both they haven't failed never failed because they've always been given everything oh my gosh right and I'm like I was on a football team that lost every game yeah oh and 10 I mean you think about it like every week that one guy's going it's a new week we're 0 and0 no we're not we're 0 and seven we suck that's kind like the idea of everybody gets a trophy yes you know and I mean you know from Sports I mean in competition you're going to lose absolutely I mean there is nobody that's undefeated forever and uh I wrestled in uh Junior High in high school and uh for a half a semeer for a semester in college and uh I lost a lot man yeah I mean I think my senior year I was somewhere around if I were I might be off here but like 60 and 13 you know that's 13 losses that's pretty good record but that's 13 losses that year you know the year before that was not was wor you actually won some after you lost right that's right building that for intestinal fortitude yeah but you got to learn how to lose and not what what it success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm yeah and uh I feel like we're we're losing that in society now you know you're talking about that incel thing I had heard of that I I didn't know what it was but now it was kind of like as we're talking I'm remembering um you know I see like the uh this movement right now to make men uh uh more masculine and I'm like okay yeah we we have we do have a lot of weak men right now and we need to get more masculine men men that are are are okay with being men but I see some of the stuff being taught that I'm like well that's not exactly what true you know being a man is that's like you know it's almost like they're trying to prove it and um you know the incel stuff I I had heard heard that and some of those guys were you know were um kind of in that you know in that movement per se it's like almost like this uh watered down version of of masculinity uh because Society has already been pushed down men already been pushed down so weak they don't even know how to be men so it's like they're grasping at straws yeah I'm old enough to remember the Little Rascals that's all I'm thinking is when you say incel I keep seeing the he man what is it He-Man Woman Haters Club what they had on their Treehouse uh yeah I don't know you know um it's it's a weird it's a weird culture but again um there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on right now yeah I me I think like as we're talking just what comes up for me is like speaking up as a human being on uh what is good and you know against what's evil yeah and you know to do that you've got to come from a place of Love cuz a lot of times there's no benefit yeah uh and as as from parenting or just being adults overseeing uh youth um I'm huge on anti-bullying right I I am bullying and and used to you know in our day The Bullying stopped when you when you left school and you went home but now with social media I mean they're getting bullied all through the night and you see it time after time somebody commits suicide or somebody nuts out and comes in and shoots up the school you know those are those are um it goes back to the division though right but uh I just wanted to throw that anti-bullying thing in there because I I'm not a fan of bullying at all well it's causing you know like you're talking about mass shootings like uh it's I think one of the causes what do you what do you think you know are the causes of all the mass shootings that we're experiencing every week now uh that is a that's a not a loaded question but that's that's a tough one because I I from what I've seen and the studies that that we've done um it's always the after action right the after action report we start diving back in after the fact and you start looking at you go oh man there was a there was a sign there there was a sign there there was a sign there problem is as far as law enforcement goes that a lot of times you can't do anything you can go over there and say yeah he said he's going to shoot up the school okay can I lock him up for that well if it meets these standards sure and if an attorney is willing to take the case um but some of them I mean there's a lot of that stuff's bullying or or or diving down that belief system you know um you think it's like a you see these people uh super mentally ill some yeah I mean look at the uh Sandy Hook massacre right that guy was off his meds you know the guy that killed di bagl that was just a it wasn't necessarily a mass shooting event but um off his Med you know well I ask cuz I mean you think about this wasn't happening 30 years ago and they blame guns oh it's guns like well I mean I understand the gun was used but something has had had to happen in in society for us to just go and want to kill a bunch of people like it's not not normal yeah uh some of the things we put together the blocks I teach is um kids online parents are just letting them play whatever these games are so freaking uh realistic though the only thing that's not realistic is in in the video game you can respawn when you die yeah absolutely doesn't necessarily work too well here uh on Earth but the uh there's that desensitization um but I'm going to borrow a term from uh uh an acquaintance friend of mine because we were having this conversation he's a very intellectual guy I was a former police officer in in England and he he teaches at um in Philadelphia and I was asking I go so what is what I did is I was I was coming from an active shooter instructor school and we were asking the question what has changed was exactly what you just said and I posed the same question to him just over some drinks just kind of spitballing and he said you have to take away the opportunity and I was like okay let's dive into that what do you mean because there are more opportunities um for people to do bad things like can you get that gun however but but you know you can block weapons all you want but if the parent has a gun and they go get that gun you got to take away that opportunity I I put it back to uh is very simplistic but when I was a cop you always had to work side jobs if you wanted to make any kind of dun money at all um and there was a one in South Carolina called Frankie's Fun Park it's basically you go there you can do putt putt go-karts video games all that stuff pizza ice cream you name it but when you started to see and I was taught this by the uh older officer when I first came on he goes now listen if you see these kids congregating over in the corner and stuff and they're not spending money because you need to go bust them up he because because there what nothing good is going to come out of it he was 100% right so what was I doing by going over there and going hey what are you guys doing oh okay oh yeah all right you going ride some rides or whatever okay all right okay they disperse I took away the opportunity right some it's very simple but um I thought that was very very uh profound when he said that yeah I mean it's it's so does that mean more does that mean a cop on the corner I don't know uh if nobody respects cops anymore maybe not can you can you do your job as a cop I mean there I've Got Friends in Austin and um again not left or right but I'm just telling you the facts that da came in and started pulling uses of force cases that were completely cleared up to six years prior they were telling me at one point there was 35 officers on the payroll indicted yeah I mean I'm telling you as a law enforcement officer retired and I may Bond back in sure and give it another two years to round it out to a nice 30 um it kind of makes you wonder about doing your job well yeah I I can't imagine who would want to go in and be a cop these days yeah I mean I didn't like uh like I don't like police brutality right so I thought it was a really good thing yeah it should it shouldn't happen at all if you get trainings right right but there was a lot of it going on I mean is you know I look back because I you know I come from the fight world and I look back at some of the cops you know conversations and it it was and they're I still consider them good people it was just a mindset it's not now they like thumping on you and that kind of thing yeah and you know I always thought it was wrong though I didn't I didn't like it I liked there were good people but it was it was the mentality of it and so I thought it was good when they brought cameras in I think good we need cameras but the way people treat cops and how I mean they're human beings so you're you know you're getting pulled over and you're talking [ __ ] to this guy like that's a human being you don't know if he had a bad day just broke up with his wife just had a you you don't know what's going on with him he's another human being and you might catch him at a bad time and if you push those buttons too much yeah you're in a bad situation and so uh I've been blown away at how people treat the cops now and there's like there's no there's no Middle Ground you know yes I think a lot of cops were it was a different time a different era of how to do policing and uh just like we've gone through different eras throughout you know there wasn't as much fight training either right it was just swing a stick yes right exactly yeah and and now uh it is a different time but we've got to if if we don't respect uh cops just as human beings the Golden Rule you know how would you want to be treated you know now if they're a jerk I mean I still wouldn't personally uh well I've been look I've been pulled over by cops when I was a cop and they were jerks yeah I didn't put up with it I'm saying I'm with you if they're a Jerk It's one thing but like you know if they're respectful they're doing their job I'm going to have my hands on the steering wheel I'm going turn the light on yes sir no sir and and be respectful and I've never had a runin now I have well I me I got arrested when I was 20 uh that was uh I had a runin there just cuz I was doing something illegal but um I haven't had a run in in a traffic stop uh type issue I had one time with and this is a people thing this isn't a cop thing he's not a it's not a cop thing it's a people thing a border patrol thing I cross that uh Border in uh TJ all the time you know because the hospital's down there and I was with with my dad uh one one day crossing my parents would come out and you know spend some time out there with us and uh I didn't have my passport which uh my passport was lost and I so I'm crossing constantly with the lost passport I have to deal with it every single time it's it's what is what it is and um he says well how am I supposed to know who you are I like oh can you look it up in the system and and he started just berating me yeah and my and he goes back to the thing my dad's like stay calm ed and uh you know that point you know I'm like manto man like I'm ready to fight this guy yeah you know so but that's the human aspect nobody talks to me like that right it's like he was a jerk my yeah how do you why why you being such a jerk but that's the human aspect and so I feel like and that was just one guy I've crossed that border I don't know I mean the border patrol could probably tell us but like 500 a thousand times I don't know how many times and that was one instance that stuck out like for the most part I'm dealing with them every they're nice people they treat us very well so I feel like we've lost our humanity and how we treat others like in that or treat cops um because they've become the enemy and it's cool for them to be the enemy so you say you said earlier um about is it this the lack of knowledge and I'll go back to that so when Ferguson Missouri happened um and and a lot of people I don't know if they know it or not but the the hands up don't shoot thing that that was in the beginning it never happened and it came out yeah right it never happened and I'm not trying to take up for white or black I mean I've got tons of black friends and like wrong is wrong right but but that guy uh was in fear for life he was in his car the dude's trying to take his gun off of him beating him um there was never a hands up don't shoot situation but after all that happened I remember uh news coverage of uh it was I can't remember which town it was but what they did is they brought in media and you know whatever activists or whatever let us run you through some our training and all it is we call it fats training but it's the it's the simulated it's a screen you have a gun that reads on that screen when you shoot it what we were doing in in our FBI office was we're sitting there but our legal person's behind us so when we make that shot and I would have that legal person come during force on Force training when we're shooting paint rounds and stuff if you did a shooting and it was a deadly force now you after that scenario is over you have to explain why you did what you did M and then they're going to tell you if it's covered under deadly force or not um but what happened is once those people went in and they saw how quick they had to make a split decision of life or death and they all came out going oh my goodness what's what's unfortunate is we can't put that on for everybody right um but that would be great to put out there just like me like you said you sit down at a table with somebody who may have different beliefs for you but we actually have a conversation and you learn something right um that would be great I told a lot of my friends and and acquaintances I'm like man what I would love is once that thing happens let's go right to the cop let's take the camera let's take the camera from the dash and let's put it right on the news live feed but you want to play it from beginning to end not 5 seconds in the middle right so you can't see a play at all I said but you can't do that because it's now an active investigation but when the truth does come out whether it's different or the same as what you got in the beginning it's like 6 months later and it's on page 40 y you know and it's just and and bad things have already happened yeah that that uh specific case I remember um because that was a turning point MH um because it was a hands up don't shoot hands up don't shoot everybody was saying that and I remember my first reaction was this has got to stop like this is [ __ ] like uh this like 2012 2013 if I remember uh and I posted something and one of my SWAT friends messaged me and said hey you know get the full story first yeah and I was like he's right okay and you know it was a turning point I think at least in society because was one where they had said one thing happened and it was completely another I've been on let's just say Ground Zero many times in my career well we're there investigating something and it comes on the news and it is completely different completely different um and and that's that's the thing now if a cop does something wrong man I'll be the first to tell you there was one in uh North Charleston South Carolina the footage was terrible he shoots this guy walking away from him realizes he's messed up but is so panicky because he did it uh he starts trying to cover it up but the camera's still on he goes over and sits a taser on him and goes okay I'm gonna say he's got my no no no well they put that dude under the jail I me he he's done and he should have never been a law enforcement officer but I will tell you as a trainer uh again me and my peers mentors and and people I've mentored a lot of these things you see it may look horrific and it is horrific but from a cop standpoint I'm looking I'm going that's a lack of training MH it's a lack of training and you know and that's sad because the bottom line is as police departments and Sheriff's offices around this country do not have a lot of money yeah almost all of them only require they only required to shoot and qualify once a year because bullets cost money wow you know the FBI you you qualify four times a year yeah and then we're always doing all kinds of other trainings and stuff but that's the thing it's uh I mean there's so many again there's so many Avenues we can go down but it's just not you know and let's let's uh not be so quick to judge yeah but it's hard I mean it's hard not to we all mess up yeah and do it but you we we've got like you know if if we've learned anything at this point we got to wait to get yeah the story yeah you know we've got to because you never know what's being put out in front of us like if is it propaganda is it coming from the left is it coming from the right what's the angle and going back to Undercovers like one of the guys I was talking to who's kind of flit now wait he not kind of he's flip now um and we were first talking and he goes yeah you know look I know you're I know you're a good guy he goes but you know the FBI they put Undercovers in and and they start the one spreading all this stuff and then and then when that guy says oh yeah let's do it and then you arrest them I go I said I know that's what's reported yeah I go but I know a lot of those Undercovers and I said and I'm telling you without a shadow of a doubt there's no way they did it and I said and I can tell you from my experience let's not even think about let's not even talk about people that I wasn't there let's just talk about my experiences um like I said I never brought up murder I never brought up murder I thought we were going to put up Flyers but we were like why did they say bring the guns we got to find out what's going on you make a phone call Guy won't tell you you make another phone call three days later because the Atlanta team's going something's not right we need to find out guy won't tell me but he says I mean I'm not going to do it over the phone but if you want to come down here I'll tell you I'll be there tomorrow and that's when he comes out and says essentially we're going to kill some people so that that wasn't any kind of entrapment but the story would be of course A lot of times it comes out as oh the FBI and Tra well yeah I think right now that is the the feeling and maybe it's cuz it's coming from the top and what's going on with Trump but you know the FBI doesn't have a good you know public uh perception right now we we we haven't since comeing the FBI took the Baton and has not dropped it yeah I mean it's like uh it's it's rough right now but you January 6 a lot of people say there were a lot of undercover agents agent provocators pushing you know stuff like that do you believe that I would I would find that hard to believe I I wasn't there I did infiltrate militia groups who were there waiting on in their words waiting on the word from the from the commander you know in other words they've gone down they've Dove down this rabbit hole and they literally believe that they are there to take over the government just like 1776 and if Trump who they're saying was their guy which Trump doesn't know them you know but if he would have said let's go get them there was a lot of people there mhm um which begs the question to me at least how do how as a law enforcement Community or an intelligence community did we not look at this and say this is could be a powder kid getting ready to go off and not have a boatload of stuff there to take away the opportunity yeah right National Guard all this other stuff but I wasn't there for the planning and I I I try my best not the Monday Morning Quarterback and all that stuff cuz I've been under the micr many times and people are second guessing and it's just not cool but I I personally don't know of any Undercovers um and and one of the reasons I would say that is because if you have I'm also looking at from an operational standpoint if I'm the undercover coordinator or even if I'm the lead tactical guy providing advice to the division one undercover in a sea of hundreds of thousands of people if all hell breaks loose what is our extraction plan how in the hell are we going to prot take that undercover so that I I'm not sure sources I would find it hard to believe we didn't have some I mean just like going back to Charlottesville sure um there had to be sources in there or we're not doing our job right maybe not I'm not saying maybe we don't we're not tasking them um but if we don't have a single source that can provide us information out of hundreds of thousands of people that are there I don't believe as a case agent I'm doing my job yeah if that's my area if that's my area of responsibility yeah no it's interesting because that is kind of like a uh a thought could it but could it have happened sure could have you don't know but you know that's the that's the thing I've got you know some other friends that are FBI agents and great guys and I look at the rap it gets right now and it's like it's sad I don't I don't feel like most of the people in the FBI are like that think it's probably like most people in the FBI are are are good people and they've been caught up with this whole politicizing of of of the FBI and um the weaponization of the doj and you know they all get put in this group you know you're a leftwing libtard or you're a right-wing conspiracy theorist like no no no no they could be just great cops you you can be a trump supporter like so there's a system called Guardian right and that's basically where all the leads get cut but people have access other departments National Guard everybody has access to create a guardian lead MH so once that lead's created used to it may go to somebody and we'd be like oh this is BS blah blah blah after the Parkland school shooting uh it came out there was this I can't remember what it was called but basically there's a big phone bank taking in leads and there is uh but they're not investigators they're not law enforcement officers and it came out after action after the fact that that kid that shot up Parkland had been complained on more than once uh and somebody said well this is nothing but they weren't law enforcement not saying that would have made a difference but pretty much after that fact uh up until when I retired um if somebody creates a guardian lead we had to go interview them or we had to show we cannot find this person at all I mean I've gone with people to interview cuz somebody actually drafted a lead that said the woman said she was kidnapped by ISIS and they replaced her eyes with I always mess it up it was either alligator eyes or Tiger Eyes I think it was alligator IED cuz they're pretty distinct right and I'm like we have we have to go out and find this woman and interview her to find out if she's got alligator eyes I'm like are you kidding me but you had to because that's the rule so after January by the way this is how the conversation goes you knock on the door and they go hello you go I'm special agent Scott Payne this is Task Force officer blah blah blah BL blah we're here to uh we're good you don't have alligator eyes it's good we'll see you you know I mean it's like but but but that's what it became right and so after January 6 or from January 6th and on until I retired I mean what you weren't able to say when you go say it's you I got to come knock on your door it might be 10 o'clock at night you just got a trump support sign in your front yard that does not mean you're white supremacist does not mean you're a hateful person no matter what label people want to put on you right um some are of course but not all right and I'm knocking on your door I can't tell you that the lead came from your sister-in-law who says that she thinks you might be planning something bad because on a Facebook post you said everybody get ready H right now I've got to come knock on your door right and that just started spewing over and over but I had a the co-writer on my book pointed out to me because she did a lot of Journalism overseas in in the desert and stuff she said but what did the FBI do after 911 and I went oh yeah I guess I mean think of Japanese people after World War II the Pearl Harbor bomb you know so we have this jerk reaction aspect but we're also I mean I'm optimistic I'm I'm definitely a glasses half full guy we're trying to find to make sure nothing bad's going to happen sure I can't tell you how many people I've gone out and interviewed and because of a league came in and they said something pretty radical and I'm like hey I don't think I need to explain how times are right now but uh you're well within your First Amendment right I I I took an oath to uphold all amendments not just one or two um but I just want to make sure you're not really planning on doing nothing bad are you because we just want to make sure that innocent people aren't being hurt and sometimes that's enough you know yeah um what about the the base case when um when you closed it uh or when you when it finished how did how did that happen so um I'm doing that rhetorical so right you know so so kind of goes like this we've gotten into the group or I'd gotten into the group um we as a team but I'm the undercover right uh we get in there I start gain the trust of a lot of people we do a lot of trainings um and by the way uh a 19yearold kid led a carban training um with the ARs machine guns uh semi-automatic he led the training and and some of the tactics training and it was good it was not bad wasn't the best but I'm thinking to myself self if this guy really did break bad he could get the drop on a lot of people cuz he's fast and accurate now ader all had a little bit to do with that cuz they would all pump that before we'd go out and training and I'm like I'm good I'll just drink my coffee um but we started uncovering uh some different things and like I said they tied in the paganism stuff and we would go down and do blots um and like I might pray to the Norse pantheon God of whoever and then you would see the one guy he says well I'm in the Egyptian Pantheon and he starts praying to some Demon and it's about like flesh melting off and blood and gore and I'm like boy he's angry keep an eye on him you know but we started uncovering uh several plots um we had the murder plots um that that were going to be uh they what they believed was an antifa couple in Georgia but that was just the start uh Luke who went by the moniker tmbb the militant Buddhist he had already um started a list him and pestilence had already started a list of like journalist and like news people like on TV and I'm like I said oh so let me get this straight we're going to actually kill these people that are on TV too and they're like yeah this is just the beginning and I'm like well it's a good thing we've got this family to do our first dry run on you know um and and again it's it's the ax and furtherance of right so uh one guy bought bag catchers uh you they attached to your AR so if we did have to shoot them instead of the brass coming out and hitting the ground that bag catches it um if you want to kill somebody these are other ideas if you want to kill somebody let's do it with a revolver because it doesn't eject the brass um you can put a silencer on that Revolver They were going through all this uh one will post here they wanted me to go down with them to kill the family and then pestilence would burn the house down we started uncovering all this stuff meanwhile uh the group in um Baltimore Delaware area there was a I can't remember who the governor was at that time in Virginia but uh very anti-gun and there was going to be a huge gun gun rights rally around January is of 20 19 I think I got it right 19 um and then I think that's right either way it's 19 or 20 but their idea was uh they've already gone out one of them's gone out and bought he had a 6.5 creedmore uh he did have a job uh which was rare for the most of the people in the group um 6.5 Creed more and bought a $6,000 thermal scope I mean you can Bluetooth this thing you do all kinds of stuff and the idea was is it would help level the playing field um for him to take out other people at nighttime because he wasn't as good of a sniper as others but again uh Baltimore FBI had a wir tap going um and these two guys and the stuff that they would talk about in their apartment it would you would be just shocked and it's out there it's out there it's been released by Canadian broadcast it was um it's I mean they're talking about like hey we'll go shoot a cop let the cop pull somebody over we can take that cop out with a sniper rifle go down there because after we kill the cop what are you going to get you're going to get bullets you're going to get some more weapons you're going to get bulletproof vest and we'll just keep doing that almost like the snip M case like driving around DC and shooting out a trunk um and that's what we started uncovering uh and there were some other crimes like uh tagging or or defacing synagogues and stuff like that but these these this group really really and the last couple I was in it a lot of people think white supremacy they think antiblack man these people did they hate Jewish people really hate them and I'm just like and then it goes back to the whole Hitler thing you know who uh anyway um so uh one of the things that was always brought up and is interesting about the the base case is we did do a Halloween training and uh we were out there training and they went and stole a goat um or a ram I've asked owners of goats Rams it had ram horns I I think the size of the difference I don't know but either way they stole it and uh and I'd already taught some hand toand combat stuff that day um for training and I was I no dozed off in my truck and uh I get went to banging Pale Horse you got to get up you got to get up we got this goat I'm like what do you mean you got a goat I'm like oh man where did y'all take this thing they stole it so we go down in this long walk in the woods but I'd already been down there several times so it didn't freak me out the first time I walked down there Ed I was like am I getting butterflies right now I'm like this is this is kind of spooky uh so uh the long and short of it is is the sacrific the goat at a pagan blot to start the wild Hunt in Norse mythology the wild Hunt was Odin and other gods going out and just tearing up and wiping out their enemies right well their idea of the wild Hunt was we're going to start doing the same thing but it's going to be wiping the the world of non-whites and Jewish right and we're sacrificing this goat which by the way is a love offering and it needs to be it there needs to be no negativity because this goat needs to know it's loved or Ram know it's loved because it's going to Odin and and we will see it again in Valhalla or whatever we're talking about don't get me wrong I mean my whole arm's Viking kind of stuff you know but uh uh so he goes to chop the head of it off and I guess the backstrap of the goat that the the machete didn't even break a hair on it man he comes down conk and you're like oh no and I'm holding the back of the goat and I'm and did that Split Second in your mind you're going this is going to be so bloody and nasty but uh one guy had a gun they ended up shooting The Goat in the head CH cut the goat's throat um fill a chalice or glass full of blood and then we're walking around and a lot of them did acid um of course I didn't uh but went around and they would do the drop of acid and then drank the blood so by the time the glass got to me it was already clotting and this is where the Rolling Stones article got it wrong it says I said screw that no I I drank I I didn't turn it up because it was already getting chunky but I put my finger in there and drank it but I say all that because a lot of people are freaked out about that but that was a hate Camp because two days later after everybody that everybody doing acid killed the second day it's raining um but on the third day we're doing all these propaganda videos and remember me talking to you about radicalization of teens online teens online or radicalizing anybody they do these propaganda videos and the Only Rule was the next video has to be better than the last one and we're doing all that we held a fire a bonfire we burnt uh holy Bibles we burnt uh American flags you know F you're Jewish god all this stuff and then you talk about being different than what you believe of course yeah you know um I will say that the Bibles didn't burn that was pretty amazing to me um you can say what you want people like well the paper's made out of sand it doesn't burn I said I watched everything burn the cover was burnt but it flipped open in the pages and it to the point to where one guy said these [ __ ] Bibles just won't burn you know um but after all of that that's when I gained more trust and that's when they started bringing me in on these murdered things so what happens is um we're now it's almost like a Master of Puppets thing because you got so many FBI field officers investigating people in their own jurisdictions that are members of the base and we're like how do we can we because if we take this one off it's going to burn this one and vice versa you just you know so it just you know whe what you want to believe you know divine intervention or whatever you want to believe or just luck everything came together and we were able to I think it started with me on a Friday I flew to Baltimore uh met the case team drove up to Delaware trained with those guys all day sighting in weapons talking about if we were actually going to go down the following week to the gun rights rally because their idea was is to pop a few rounds because you would pretend like you're a 3center and all the cops will be there and there's going to be all these people and it's going to be a powder keg waiting to go off and they were all like what if this is the bgoo what if this is the set off to the Boogaloo how bad would you feel if you weren't there to to to make somebody bleed kind of thing I'd never forgive myself that's where we're getting and uh you know it goes to the whole gorilla Warfare poison Water Supplies derail trins take down Power Systems um anything to create chaos so we got that going and the case team's like we want to we want to dot a couple of eyes and cross a couple of T's uh a USA is ready the assistant United States Attorney ready we just want to make sure about these things to to seal it tight to get the arrest so it's an airtight case and I did that and then that Saturday I I think I crashed about 3:00 4 in the morning I got up and drove back to the airport flew to Atlanta got delayed rental car place closed hauled butt up to Rome Georgia where the other crew was at and we got everything tight on the last guy that wanted to be a part of the murders and uh so that was Sunday yeah so Sunday I drove home I got home probably like I don't know early morning hours Monday slept a little bit Tuesday I was back in Rome meeting the SWAT team that was going to do the hit the big thing with Luke was is he was on that 100 Acre Farm MH so there's no real way to sneak onto it without neighbors and stuff knowing so out of all the arrests that were going to happen we were most concerned about that one safety-wise so I I did some UC undercover work and uh and we got it to where I was going to be picking him up going to lunch and then my truck would have a problem and the SWAT team would hit us um and that's kind of how it all went down so that that Wednesday we arrested the Georgia crew um and kept it real quiet Thursday morning early hours uh FBI Washington field office SWAT and FBI Baler SWAT hit all the other guys and then it started trickling and I'm just quiet because I'm in the main chat for the base on on wire and there're now the affidavits are starting to come out and they're like oh my gosh did you see this you know P I mean I'm sorry uh tmb's been arrested oh wait a minute you know can't go back's been arrested punish snake's been arrested and punish snake was a Canadian um who had absconded illegally into the United States because he got doxed you know what doxed is right so um he got outed for the listeners that may not know he got outed in in media and everything in Canada for being a white supremacist and he absconded illegally there was a time where we were looking for him we found him down at the I went to a training down at the farm we had no idea we went down there and I was like there's an extra person under the awning I walked up and I go oh my gosh it's the Canadian so they got him um um and then I'm sitting there and it's Friday and I'm watching all the chatter has anybody talked to Pale Horse this sat the other this that and the other well here's the crazy thing about the Bas the leader and creator of the bass is named Ronaldo nazaro Ron Ronaldo Ronaldo nazaro is an American citizen who graduated from it wasn't Purdue was it villain NOA I don't know but he graduated from a pretty prominent School um was Army intel was uh was contracted under the Department of Justice I can't remember if it was FBI or whatever well now he resides in Russia and he created the base he had some land in the Pacific Northwest but uh you know awful lot of money to say you're just translating English or teaching English right so you know draw from that what you want but he's the leader and as I'm watching right around 5:00 on Friday I see hey you know uh how how can we not know if there's a Fed in here blah blah blah we've done this because every time a member would get doxed in the base and get outed the op operational security got tighter in other words now I'm not just going to come meet you and talk to you face to face I'm going to make you use racial slurs and see if you're uncomfortable using you know things like that um to be vetted thoroughly so right around that time Roman comes on and he says uh I don't know if we could ever something to the effect of I don't know anything we done anything we did could have outed him he was one of our best members and then I'm reading it I'm going oh he knows it's me now you know and uh and he starts laying it out and he said that I went to every training which should have been a maybe that should have been a red flag but I didn't go to everyone he got that wrong but um anyway you're sitting there watching it you're watching them reading it and then boom it says you've been removed by Roman so I screenshotted that and sent it to all the teams and said I'm out um but there were members in there that went on to say things like wait you're telling me the Fed was the guy with the deep voice and they're like yeah and they're go you know there was something really endearing about him and then the other day would be like well maybe that's why they picked him and stuff so the thing is is it's still out there because of course everybody wasn't arrested because everybody didn't commit a crime necessarily right and hopefully we did our due due diligence and that scared a lot of people off to say this is wrong I'm not going to do this anymore but a lot of people just change their moniker and they go right to this other website or Discord or it was 4chan 8 Chan 12chan whatever they got now threa all these things but like you look at the mass shooter from uh New Zealand Christ Church New Zealand he was posting live on it was either hn I think it was H Chan at that point he's posting live I'm getting ready to go do this I'm going to blog it live all the white supremacy stuff stuff so you know it's still out there how big would you say uh it is currently in the United States I you know I'm I'm I'm hesitant to throw a number because like even in the Rolling Stones article which again the the the journalist is now a friend of mine for life but that's his verbiage you know it was an interview um million I don't know about no dag a million there's some think tanks in DC that said there's over a million White suprem is you waiting to knock on your door and and I'm like I ain't seen that but I've seen yeah thousands yeah thousands and you could and you could see and the but this is just from my experience and where I was at right hopping um in different cases but some cases might have hundreds of members and spewing all kinds of uh anti-semitic hate I would go to bed and I'd wake up six or so hours later and I'm 2,000 post behind so for 5 months I'm going through every post cuz I'm afraid mhm that I'm going to miss something right and I don't want anybody to get hurt because of something I did wrong right but after 5 months of reading nothing but posts thousands and thousands of posts I'm like okay we got to stop because I can't I mean there's they're not they're not doing anything bad but I don't know I mean hundreds to thousands maybe but then again are you just on the outskirts and just spewing hate or are you actually diving in and you're going to be one of those um one of those longone Wolves yeah you know know I think we see that I I just I've always been curious cuz they right now I think the media makes it seem like there's a lot of white supremacists uh well they're also tying that militia stuff in there right so you can go to other things for militia stuff too telegram this that and the other and there's recruitment videos and stuff for you know anti-government you know showing you pictures of China and this that and the other and um I think they're tying them all together but yeah yeah but um you know I at least in the circles that I run if there was a white supremacist that was like hateful we'd be like you know get out yeah and it's it's unfortunate that they tie you know that to just the regular folk cuz you know none of us are any of that no there's no way um you know on on the base of on the base story you know when it came out in Rolling Stone um what was the reaction from the FBI [Laughter] uh some was good some was not so good um again FBI has an FBI pre-publication unit um it's pre-publication review office and uh I'll just say that a lot of us aren't really didn't know what all you're supposed to put through them um we briefed the we briefed the article up for three months uh and I guess it didn't go to the right people so there was a little bit of snafu there um I mean I actually had an award taken from me but uh it's okay uh what was the award supposed to be it was the uh FBI director's award oh man for that case yeah oh man but before the article came out I was told I was getting it and I was pretty proud um because that's one I'd never gotten and then in 48 hours I was told that it was being pulled from me and the article hadn't even been out and I get it I get an need jerk reaction and stuff cuz you don't know if there's anything classified or if I'm burning somebody but um I did my due diligence with the uh with the other under covers that were on the cases that I were on and I'm like look I'm retired I'm coming out are you okay with me showing my face are you're not okay with me showing my face um cuz at first I was like I want to show my face and then I was like no I'm not going to show my face and then I'm like well if you see my tattoos that's still and then I I started thinking of one of my mentors Jack Garcia who was basically a full-time Undercover almost his entire career for the FBI did a lot of Mafia type stuff big Cuban guy um Big Jack and uh I remember his his book coming out and he was doing the typical interviews where it's the silhouette you can't see his face and it's the robotic voice or whatever the the voice box thing on it and after about two months he's like screw this he was on 60 Minutes and said look I'm wiing Garcia I'm everybody calls me Jack I'm not a bad guy I'm retired this is my stuff so um the article though uh you know my it did great things um and I like the article but I never got to see the article before it came out as you know it's journalist Rolling Stone they'd read it to me but at 12,000 words I start nodding off and stuff so there were some things in there that I I think could have been a little better but again it was it was an interview um I thought it painted the FBI in a positive light which is big for me um I could I could be a Basher I could probably even be a maybe a whistleblower um but I'm not trying to put I'm not trying to tarnish the badge um one bad incident like George Floyd you know that that tarnished a ton of badges for cops who were good cops you know and that was an atrocious thing that happened but um I'm not trying to do that I'm trying to um paint a positive light and maybe say some good things yeah do you do you worry about uh you know being public like uh for for your safety cuz people know who you are yeah I get asked that a good bit and um for me personally um I'm not it's not me I'm worried about but you know family and stuff I don't want my family to be scared and and they are and they get scared and but in the criminal system this is where a lot of people may not understand when we arrest somebody in the United States we build a case and we arrest you at some point we have to turn over was called discovery which is pretty soon after the arrest so that means that with it's Federal it's the assistant United States Attorney through the United States attorney's office we hand over everything that we did to build that case I don't care if it's me and you sitting there and I'm taking notes those notes should have been put in what we call a 1A and put in the file and it's all released so the bottom line is this at some point the defendant is going to be sitting with their attorney and they're going to get the discovery and they're going to know that I was the undercover mhm they're going to know it they may not know my full name but they know that I was the undercover um so I'm burnt at that point as far as that case goes you know I did one in a rural County in Tennessee I could never go back there you know the Outlaws I could never go back to the Outlaws I've been I've been asked to do a a biker club and it might I'd be like hey who are they affiliated with will they're affiliated with the Outlaws nope can't do it because it would be one Regional run because I mean I traveled up and down the east coast and out to Sturgis um and I'm like it just one big meat and somebody could see me and go hey that guy's a fed you know so um I was blessed in those aspects being covered while I was out there uh my wife helped me come up with the terminology is I I wasn't necessarily undercover I was under his cover there you go so um and hers too but you know it's uh I I I said it this way I'm not trying to sound cocky um I don't live in fear I don't walk around living in fear on eggshell walking on eggshells scared but I don't close my eyes either I don't turn the Blind Eye you know um I will say for the most part the friendships or relationships that I built on Undercovers a lot of them still we still like each other afterwards again back to Bugs Bunny remember the sheep dog and the coyote they fight all day at work and then they clock out and it's like hey I'll see you tomorrow Sam you know that kind of thing um I've actually been drunk dialed by people that I put in jail cuz I would leave my undercover phones on you know whatever I had for that case I wouldn't just shut it off I'd leave it on for a good couple of months never know if you're going to get threatened or whatever I'd get hey Scott this is your boy I love you man I just want you to know I know you doing your job you know so um but yeah that's just something you got to deal with and there going to be haters out there uh you know when this thing started with the Rolling Stones Magazine I you know you find out people that you you may thought were your friends or whatever they're saying things and it hurts at least it hurt me yeah and I'd be good for a couple of days and I'd be sick in my stomach and thatd be good for a couple days and I'd be sick in my stomach and then at the end I'm like wait a minute I'm a good guy I mean I don't I don't know what you want me to do and you just cross a threshold to where you're like I don't it's not that I don't really care what you think but I don't really care what you think yeah you know what I mean um and I've always been a boisterous guy you know somebody like after before the Rolling Stones article was about to come out they were like in their opinion and they were an acquaintance I won call him a friend because Brothers don't do what some people do you know they're not your brother or sister but it was like what you need to do is you need to lay low in The Tall Grass you need to wait several years well how many years is long enough and I said here you know what I appreciate your concern for me but we've known each other for about 15 years and we have drank a lot together and we put on a lot of schools together not once have you ever asked me about my family so it's okay I hear what you're saying but you do you and I'm going to do me I don't know how to do that I'm a musician and a singer I'm playing in front of a thousand people at three or four Services yeah at church and stuff so that's just me I go out and I speak and I teach and some people will say you just like talking about yourself well that just lets me know you don't really know me right you know and by the way this is something else culturally why is it so hard especially in groups like military groups and why is it so hard for somebody just say congratulations right why is it so hard yeah it's not a competition I've noticed it with some of my military uh friends that are um I'm not going to say higher profile but you know you kind of watch the comp the competition yeah and it's like you know uh you know I actually thought about it a lot like I wonder what causes that I guess the egos can be so high yeah that uh you know instead of just being happy for it gets toxic I've been on squads where we're all good friends now now but there were times under certain management that the squad that was so good became so toxic and nobody like you get an award oh well you just got it because of this oh I found out why you got that award because a person on your case team sits on the board for the like come on well thanks for doing some you know whatever why can't you just say congratulations I've had people that I did not like and I mean I tried to like them and I did not like them but they did good on the squad and I'd go over it and they'd be like looking at you shocked like you're coming up after the briefing I go dude this is one hell of a case yeah I mean this is awesome and they're like yeah isn't it see it's no hard feelings and if you want to go tactics I'll put it another way tactically I may love you to death you may be the Godfather of my children you may be my blood brother whatever best friend ever if you're not tactically sound I don't want you making that entry with me right on the other hand you could be somebody I can't stand I wouldn't I don't even want to have lunch with you I want to have a beer with you but you're tactically sound well then I want you going in it's not subjective right it's subjective right you can't this just it can get toxic like that but it sometimes that hurts but you know I don't know if I got to pay money for this but it come across my mind I'm like you know Taylor Swift song I'm haters are going to hate I'm just G to shake it off right right right exactly exactly um what's the impact of uh you know of your family through this like how did your family help you you get through 23 years in the FBI well um probably solely second to God right um for me um but just brought up something in my head you know when things are good you kind of forget when things were rough and when we were doing this book like you know everybody like I can write a great 302 which is a report for the FBI it's going to be articulate it's going to be the facts that's nothing nobody wants to read it reads like a report right but people want to hear the turmoil they want to they you know that's that's good reading and that's good lesson learning well me and my wife we at one point we were like looking at each other going man we've got to dive back into the bad times we don't want to but even going through that for the book I learned things that I didn't know like uh during those three years or when I'm running 50 million ways uh I was a ghost at home I would arrive home and I would be so beat because Not only was I Undercover on two different cases I was the uh the primary relief supervisor for the squad which means if the boss has gone you're running the squad uh I was on SWAT um I ran all the Tactical training and firearms training for Mallen so I mean it would be a full month of just you know just swamped with hardly any days off um and I would come home and just crash with my with my children at that point little but how many many kids do you have two two okay um and then unless you want to start counting dogs cuz they're kids too yeah that's right or older parents which is kind of like having a kid that's right because but uh yeah it's it hurts cuz I look back and you're like man but I I am a workaholic um I get it naturally I'm goal oriented um but we kind of came up with a model because I said look it's God first family second I said if you call me and I'm like yeah yeah yeah and I go to get if you just break that thought process and say uh Scott I need you now I know because at that point the job's not more important than the family right but you get wrapped up in your goals and getting all this stuff done and and and and doing good work yeah but it's it's uh it is not an easy balance and I didn't do great at it um I don't think I did as terrible as some but again it's not a comp right um uh but my my wife is a saint for sure that's awesome for uh somebody so I get these calls now you retired and they're like hey man what are you up to and I go well I'm trying to pay my wife back for all the [ __ ] she put up with for 28 years you know uh so how's that working I sometimes I do good sometimes not so good yeah but um would you say the position that you're in now though it it was all built up and worth it like the yeah I don't regret a lot yeah I don't regret a lot for instance I got PTSD um and you know I I'm I I I'm big on Mental Health you know uh especially in the law enforcement world and the same thing for military I mean what are we number one for you know what law enforcement military is number one for divorce suicide yeah alcoholism which can tie in pills and everything else you shove down your throat these days um and who wants to sign up for that right I'm number one woo yeah you know go out with a bang um but I'm big on that and I've taken some of the blocks that I've that I've taught over the years and I've Twisted it more towards mental health because as I mentioned earlier I did meet my threshold I'd gone too long I applied the warrior mentality to everything I wasn't taking days off because I didn't want management bitching because I was gone um I was burning the candle at both in so I ran out of wax I'm not saying I'm better than anybody else by any means right um there are some that can make it way farther than I did I do think it es and flows it's kind of like working out um sometimes your your threshold can be crossed pretty early but um I I forget where I was going what would you you talking about mental health and um you know kind of how it is I was going to ask you uh with uh you remember what you're going to say yeah okay well I was going to say I had PTSD you asked me basically a a question about do I regret kind of not asking me if I regret but it's how I was thinking um I thought one day I'm like man if I if this wouldn't have happened if I would have if those back surgery complications wouldn't happened and for three weeks I wouldn't have been through living hell and all these doctors didn't know what's going on I wouldn't have PTSD one one thing and I would have never had to suffer any of that and then I'm telling you Ed within 30 seconds I said but if I didn't have that when I crashed Joe pistone wouldn't have been calling me m the Donnie Brasco uh other men T Steve Sal whatever uh Mike all these guys um wouldn't have been calling me and saying country is my nickname Big Country I'm more medium now but uh I was bigger then uh but they'd be like hey big country you all right and I'm like yeah man I'm I'm I'm doing okay they told me they're the ones that told me take care of yourself take care of your family but as soon as you can put pen to paper about everything you've learned in this whole thing because that's how we get our best blocks of instruction and that's how you pay it forward and they were 100% right right so without me going through those bad things I would have never created those blocks of instruction and met thousands upon thousands of people so um I'm not a guy that really looks back and says man I'd change a whole bunch you know could I have done better yeah but I also believe everything happens for a reason yeah same same man I look at like where uh we're at in life like for for the business side is as in like God had a plan he literally didn't let us get too big too soon because we weren't ready for it right and the timing has always been perfect even when at the time it didn't make sense and yeah you know we might go bankrupt or we might do you know and so same it's like those those tough times uh they kind of they kind of uh mold you absolutely so absolutely and and and and again kind of through the undercover work you know in the Outlaws I was in for a year and a half and then they brought me down into the it's more like a seller but into the basement of the clubhouse and stripped me at gunpoint looking for a wire after a year and a half but the reason they did it is because we up the Annie about doing this big dope deal if I didn't have a wire on me it wouldn't have been a big deal I'd have taken my clothes off fine let's go m i was wired to the hill and they missed it by that much so I learned from that where how how did they miss it uh it's just if you can say if you can't well you know even for the book I just say hey it was I I don't think I say what part of clothing it was I just said hey it was it was on my person but I will tell you that um I was pretty anal about the thing they wanted to put on me to record video yeah cuz the first couple iterations were not okay with me cuz I'm like I don't feel comfortable in it it doesn't matter if you think it's worth or not I'm the one going through the door yeah if I'm not if I'm not comfortable with it I'm not going to do it and I think it ended up saving me that night wow so I don't know if I'd have gotten my butt kicked I don't know if they would have shot me I don't know but uh yeah but I learned from that and that molds you to become stronger as as an undercover not just anything else because you got everything on the line there um and we got about about seven minutes I'll have three minutes before my attorney call no good uh but your your mindset while you're being stripped naked and searched like what how do you keep your I was back the very beginning of the interview like how do you keep your composure scared shitless yeah um so if you talk to a lot of tactical trainers we always say Hey you bleed on the Range so you don't die in the street so some people call it muscle memory I got a pet peeve with that because I don't think my bicep has a brain but if I train or we train and we train and we train on getting shot at getting off the X Change I can show you video after video of cops probably even military but more M Min are more law enforcement that got into shooting they have no idea how many rounds they shot they have no idea that they took effective cover when they did a magazine exchange they have no idea that they got off the X because they trained so it became instinctive so even though you're having that old [ __ ] moment that adrenaline dump where your your eyes uh you get um we get you get uh audio exclusion auditory exclusion so your ears are going W who any traumatic incident I mean I remember being in my first car wreck it was slow motion right you know a time dilation your eyes are going click click you can feel your heart beating it feels like it's 5 minutes and it's only 30 seconds you know um but in the undercover world you don't necessarily get to do that unless you go back to the school and you roleplay or you go out with a group of Undercovers and you just start working it and you do a bunch of wh ifs what happened in that old [ __ ] moment because I definitely had it um is I forgot my middle name but I didn't realize I did a distraction technique I'm saying all these things um now I'm also listening and I'm going oh they're going to run me on who aat.com they're going to run me they're going to gole me okay I'm also looking at my friend like probably the second closest relationship I had out of the two-year case he's the one he's the enforcer he's the one having stripped me man um and I'm looking into his eyes and I'm not saying it out loud but I'm basically my face is saying am I going to be all right and his face back to me was kind of you're going to be all right but then he ends up grabbing the piece of clothing and looks pretty much right where the the equipment was at and I and you can hear me in the background Going H and I don't even know I'm doing it right but it's it's one of those things where I I think it may appeared that I was cool I wasn't cool yeah but it was just that the training came in wow yeah um you think he saw it maybe and just no he didn't for sure they yeah that's wild man I mean it's got a uh you think you have PTSD from those type of instances no not necessarily mine was mine was back surgery complications that put me down for 3 weeks and basically I felt like I couldn't breathe I would eat this much food and I felt like I was suffocating and after 3 weeks we figured out what it was but by that time the damage was done so so fast forward five seven years later I'm in The Outlaw case um been out drinking all night you wake up you can hear the whiskey and eggs swishing in your belly you know and I started doing like a P90X workout I came up I was down in Florida and I came up for air and it wasn't there and my mind reverted back to 2002 to the PTSD you know or to that to that traumatic incident and uh yeah that was mine just the breathing stuff you you had mentioned mental health for police officers and Military and let's kind of close it with this what would you say to somebody like that has gone through something traumatic uh talk to somebody absolutely talk to somebody I'll give you my number my phone rings 247 and that's no [ __ ] I do have the notification sounds off from like I don't know whatever 10308 right but it anytime you want or find somebody I get the stereotypical you might want to not want to talk to your psychologist at your at your department because it could leak out it may affect even though they say it's not supposed to it does happen but find somebody there's somebody there find you a Christian counselor find you a buddy you're not the only one going through it um there are tools you can put in your toolbox to help it's not it doesn't mean you're wimp because I mean I said look man if you know anything about construction what if I just gave you a hammer and a screwdriver and said build that house that's going to be pretty damn tough but if I fill your truck up with tools to build that house with it's just more tools and other people have gone through it and you can get and and again you might go talk to somebody and they might be terrible mhm well I'm going to use one from my pastor he talked about getting burned at church here's what he said you ever had food poisoning everybody raised their hand he said did you quit eating right exactly that's a good point so go find you another therapist you know but but don't hold it in don't listen not in arguments but in discussions with people who don't know law enforcement I said do you know how often it is you show up in uniform and everybody's happy to see you because it's rare it's rare maybe a car wreck where somebody needs to be pulled out or something but when you walk into somebody's home or you stop somebody yeah it's it's kind of rare so and you you start getting spit at and you start getting treated like trash and you take that home and you keep it and then you let it affect your family and then when you go out with your family you look at somebody that looks similar to what you've been dealing with and you're already generalizing them then break away let it go you know talk to somebody absolutely anything got you'd like to say kind of in closing H love Yeah man is answer yeah I i' I've been blessed I've been blessed as a case agent I've been blessed as a undercover I've been blessed as an instructor and speaker um I just appreciate the time man you know I've already said my piece about there's women and men out there that have done way more than me and that's that's a huge thing to me because um even if they don't want to talk about it that's fine but um I'm just trying to to do good you know absolutely well Scott thanks for coming all the way from Knoxville your uh your career is amazing thanks for doing what you've done for you our country too you know taking dangerous people uh that want to kill others and harm others you know off the streets and uh you know doing God's work in many ways it's uh you know if you haven't been told thank you uh recently thank you for for what you do uh I consider it an honor I'm grateful man and I'll say one last thing this is some this is how I start conversations with some of the people I've had to from Hollywood and stuff I go before we start I just want you to have this mindset there are evil people on this planet that want to do evil things to good people not everybody but there are those so just keep that in mind remember that thank you got thank you buddy