Transcript of Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team | Kyle Vowinkel

And it goes south from there. So the HRF come, the assaulters come, uh, vehicle right up the front, and it's a shootout. Rounds start coming both ways. We're shooting at him, they're shooting, uh, and we have one of our guys get shot really badly on the porch. Uh, he gets 2 right underneath the vest. He goes down to a knee. Same guy with— then his right there at the window. He stands in front of the window to obscure fire, fires at the guy while 2 other guys go grab him, move him off the porch, you know, get him around the corner, and they start providing him, you know, medical care till the ambulance can pull up. So there's a longer, like, 20-minute firefight going back and forth. He then at one point shoves his— opens the front door, shoves his wife out. And I was like, holy moly, there's another Person inside.

Yeah. Hey folks, welcome to The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, and we're very happy to have in studio our guest today, Kyle Vowinkel. He is the author of Shaping Chaos. It's a new book about leadership, but also it infuses some actual lessons from your career. He spent 25 years at the FBI. And very interestingly served in both the hostage rescue team and the crisis negotiation unit. Like probably one of the very few people that have served in both of those outfits.

And there's only been a handful of us crazy enough to make that switch.

And, you know, Kyle had, he went to West Point, spent time in the military police, then went to the FBI, HRT, JSOC deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And some other stuff. Also present for the Boston Marathon bombing aftermath and the Alabama Bunker Boy rescue that HRT and CNU participated in, successfully rescuing a kidnapped kid. So there's a lot to talk about here. And thanks for being on the show, Kyle.

No, thanks for having me. Yeah, fortunate, truly, to be part of some exceptional teams that did some exceptional work.

Yeah. Well, so Take us, you know, to the beginning and tell us a little bit about like where you grew up and what kind of like interested you in at first the Army.

I grew up in San Diego, right next to Miramar, you know, Top Gun jets roaring overhead. Cool. My dad was a naval aviator in Vietnam. So very patriotic city. And I grew up in the '80s watching like Rambo, you know, Red Dawn and Rocky, you know, love those movies so much. So my brother, he was older. Like we would dress up and play army. Like we went to the old like surplus stores, bought camouflage fatigues. And imagine doing this today. Like we 14-year-old boys wearing full camo, plastic guns we would spray paint black so they looked real. We'd camo up our face and we walked down the middle of the street to the canyon, you know, 4 or 5 dudes, you know, people call the police. We'd never get out of our house.

Yeah.

Doing that. So we kind of loved playing army, if that makes sense, even though we're in a Navy town. with a Navy dad, although he went in the reserves after his active duty time. And obviously I wasn't alive when he was in Vietnam, but I grew up in that community and my dad really modeled that service to country. But I was kind of a rebellious kid, argued a lot with my mom. Like I was handcuffed twice by the police, gotten in 5 car crashes.

So that's your introduction to law enforcement.

Exactly. And my dad, he had actually worked for San Diego PD for a couple of years and crashed, yeah, 5 of my parents' cars. And I was not a good kid.

Um, so when, uh, I mean, did the Army come about because, uh, you know, a judge or maybe your dad were like, yeah, you're, you know, destined for military service?

Uh, good question. No, my, my parents definitely thought I could possibly end up in jail because I would sneak out of the house and like We would never do anything seriously wrong, but we like snuck in the community pool and, you know, swam at like midnight on like Sunday night. Again, doing no destruction. Did destroy some pumpkins one Halloween. That was the first time I got handcuffed. You know, we took somebody's pumpkin and destroyed it, which we shouldn't have done. And, you know, a cop took me back in cuffs to my parents and thankfully was never written up. Sorry, Mom and Dad. So that was my first time. The second time was senior ditch day. You know, the cops came to senior ditch day and, you know, broke it up. So I was never placed in detention, or I should say never taken in custody to jail, but just on site.

Processed.

And I, my brother was 2 and a half years older and he went to West Point. He got in. And it wasn't until I visited him like my sophomore year of high school and I saw the academy grounds and more importantly, I saw the cadets and like the discipline. the kind of tribe the military was and the cohesion, the morale, and that esprit de corps. And that's when I decided I want to be part of that because I really was kind of a wayward youth, like I said. So that was really the impetus for me to apply. But again, I was pretty foolish. How dumb was I? That's the only school I applied to was West Point. Again, my mother and father could have throttled me. And I just barely got in, got my congressional nomination, And it was because I visited my brother and seeing again the cadets and the campus.

And so this is in the late 1980s?

Yeah, 1989, I reported.

1989. And how did you take to West Point and that regimented way of life?

Not good at all. Because actually, I remember I had teachers even tell me during the parent-teacher conferences senior year, telling me and my mother, there's no way Kyle is going to make it at West Point. Because I was actually the class clown too. So not only am I rebellious, but I want to make people laugh when I go to West Point. And it was a total culture shock. And I knew it was going to be regimented, but I didn't know that it's so regimented. Like, your toothbrush has to be pointed one way in the door, and your toothpaste lid has to be pointed the other way. Like, it's down to that level of detail. Again, understandably so now in hindsight, but then as a punkish 18-year-old, I couldn't stand it. You're like, what the hell is this? So actually, I got in trouble several times. We had Army-Navy Week is like the biggest week of the year. The closest West Point ever gets to a real college is that week because everyone's so kind of pumped up to beat Navy. It's the biggest football game of the year, of course, the biggest sporting event for West Point for sure.

And we had a jockstrap rally on the plain of West Point. The superintendent had told us, don't do it. Well, of course, me and like 200 of my classmates go out there anyway. It's like midnight, so no one's going to see it. No public's going to see it. But we go up midnight on Thursday and we do a quick Go Army chant, beat Navy. And then we run back and I was tackled and caught. And I got called, I got the regimental board, like a really serious disciplinary, like 60 area tours. We were marching back and forth. That's the system they had. And it was just brutal. So yeah, the first semester I was again, not a good cadet because I just, I didn't like being told what to do and I just kind of rebelled against the How long did you have to spend every night marching? Well, they only let you do 5 hours a week. So it was only like 2 hours on a Friday and 3 on a Saturday, but you'd have to spend like an hour or 2 preparing all your stuff because you'd have to brush, shine your brush, shine your shoes.

So even though it was only 5 hours, it really ate up like 7 or 8. And then you couldn't like go out even off campus, right? When you were restricted, you were doing the area tour. So you just had to sit in your room. So you can march off, like I said, again, 5 every weekend. So what did that work out to be? 12 weekends. But that sucked. Social life is not a positive aspect of West Point.

And from West Point, you branched into the military police. Oh, and why don't you tell us about kind of your introduction to the FBI while you were at West Point?

So there's another cadet. There was a law enforcement tactics club there. And the cadet's dad was an FBI agent. And obviously I'd heard about the FBI growing up, kind of thought it was cool. And excuse me, that dad took us and fellow members to the FBI range one day. We went shooting. I thought, wow, this is really interesting how the FBI runs a range. Now the military runs a range. Then a few months later, we went to the Tactical Emergency Vehicle Operations Course, TEVOC, in Wallkill, New York. The FBI driver training used to be there. And we got to drive cars, you know, super cool, you know, driving cars fast and, you know, skidding around. And it just like a light bulb on me, a light switch, like the military is so regimented, it needed to be. And I also thought about the officer career path was not, you didn't get to be, you know, a shooter per se, or really do the fun stuff for that many years as an officer career. But I learned you could be an FBI agent your entire career. You never had to go higher. You never had to move, transfer either.

You could stay in one place. do one job for 20 years. And that really appealed to me. So I decided at West Point, I'm going to try to go in the FBI. So that's why I chose, or I branched military police, trying to make myself more competitive in my subsequent bureau application.

And so how did you like, I mean, in retrospect, being a military police officer?

It was not my favorite job. I enjoyed the people I worked with, but the mission, you know, patrolling the streets and enforcing, you know, road regulations. I didn't enjoy that at all. I did get to deploy. I was with the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood most of my time. And so we got deployed to Full Eagle, the 30-day to Korea.

In Korea.

That was really enjoyable. I went from Pusan all the way up to the DMZ. And that was my first deployment overseas. And then went to Gitmo for 6 months with the Haitian and Cuban refugees. And that was kind of interesting because there was one when the president said they're not going to let any of those refugees back in the States.

Was this like the Muriel boatlift or is it after that?

It was after that.

Yeah, because that was Cuba. Yeah.

But there's still like, it was like 20,000 refugees separated in several camps. And I was a first lieutenant. So I had a camp of maybe 2,500 Haitians. And when they got the news of that, like riots broke out. Like no shit, we had to evacuate our positions inside the camp. They were sharpening tent poles and they had little juice cans. You remember those little orange juice cans, like 4 or 5 ounce? They were filling them with rocks, throwing them at soldiers. That was the first time I had to lead an element like into harm's way. And I was so nervous because we, again, we'd evacuate our positions. The Haitians are running. amok. We had, you know, hard perimeter units established in Humvees with Mark 19s and .50 cals. So they weren't exiting the camp, but we still had to go back and take control of the camp. So, you know, all the junior lieutenants, myself, we're all looking at one another like, what are we going to do? You know? And then, you know, battalion commander, of course, makes the call. We're going back in. Go get all your riot gear on and your troops and you're leading your platoons back in.

That was the first time I remember like putting on that heavy riot gear, which is super heavy too. Like talk about non— not that any gear is ever comfortable, but it's just really difficult to maneuver and lead. And I remember the troops were looking at me and I was nervous for the first time, like sincerely thinking, crap, like this is on my shoulders now. Everyone's lives is in my hands. And I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I don't know how to take back a camp, you know? And we just said, all right, we're going to get in line. All right. And just, we had our sticks, no weapons, right? Because we're not taking weapons inside the camp and just formed a skirmish line.

And there's just shields and sticks.

Yeah. Shields and sticks. And just one step at a time and they're throwing shit at us. And thankfully it wasn't, wasn't serious melee. Like we weren't getting into fisticuffs, but I was definitely nervous when we were first about to enter.

Have you ever heard the story about the MPs that got into something similar down in Panama?

No.

It's kind of like a— for some people it's an urban legend. This really happened. I think it was a Cuban refugee camp in Panama.

Okay.

And they revolted and the MPs got sent in to kind of squash it. And some of those guys, I wish I could remember the exact unit. I remember their nickname was the Wildcats. That was the platoon.

Mm-hmm.

And they described it like they were like the Roman Legion, 'cause these like volleys of rocks were just coming and just pelting, like messed them up real bad. So they kind of got pushed backwards, as I recall. And then that night, the MPs went in there with 2nd Ranger Battalion, and they all had baseball bats and ax handles. and got their satisfaction tuned them up tenfold from what I've been told.

Yeah. I've not heard that story.

That's, I know some people who were there. Like, that's no shit. True story. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. It was not a—

So what was the result of that? You know, for you, the camp riot?

Learning, right, that leadership is about projecting confidence even when you're not confident inside. Right. And I say it's leaders lend their nervous system. Right. Because everyone looks to that leader, even if you're second or first lieutenant, all the 30 troops were looking at me to be composed.

Right.

For me not to be highly emotional and to make decisions and be right there with them. I'm standing there right side by side and I'm not showing any fear, even though inside I'm a tiny bit nervous. So that was the most important thing I realized is that it's okay to be a little bit nervous, but for your troops and for the mission, you got to stay composed. And yeah, again, because you lend your nervous system to everyone and they're going to feed off you.

Yeah.

And if you start panicking, they will.

Yeah. You know, it runs like wildfire, panic. And same thing too. If it's calm, cool, collected, then generally they'll be calm, cool, collected.

So I take it you guys got the camp under control at some point.

We did. Yeah. We, We marched in there and as soon as we got within 10, 15 feet, you know, they scattered. They're big talkers when we were, you know, outside the fence. As soon as we came in, then it was, it wasn't that rough to take it back over.

So as you're kind of like ending your time in the military, you're already thinking about the FBI.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what was like the application process like for you?

Well, I even went to night school. Oh, you were able to get— Get my master's degree.

Was that required?

No, not required, but I just wanted to make myself more competitive. You know, I went to Ranger School. I wanted to test myself there and jump school. So those were good, at least to me, kind of testing grounds to kind of prove myself and see if I liked that kind of special or higher level units. And I really did. And Then I applied at like the year 3 and a half mark. You know, you have a 5-year commitment for West Point, and the Bureau accepted me— or excuse me, the Bureau sent me a letter of rejection. And again, I'm a master's degree, West Point, successful officer, and I was stunned, right? Because I've been really preparing for like 5 years to be an FBI agent.

Yeah.

And I was afforded by the process through the San Antonio FBI office. And so the next afternoon I could get off. I drove down there personally to the applicant coordinator and I just said, how can I make myself more competitive? And she said, oh, what's your name? Kyle Von Winkle. She goes through, it's like paperwork back then. She finds my application. Oh, here you are. You were placed in the least competitive pile of paperwork. You should have been placed in the most competitive. So literally, had I not drove the 2 and a half hours there, kind of challenged that verdict that I wasn't competitive enough, I never would have had this career and I never would have done anything.

That's crazy.

Yeah. So thankfully I was able to fix the clerical error or she was able to fix the clerical error. And yeah, I got in 4 years, 9 months, started Quantico. Wow.

And so this was 2001-ish?

'98, I got out.

Okay. It was not.

Okay.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So '98, you were going through the FBI Academy. And was it what you had hoped it would be?

Yeah. Really top-notch intellectual people, but compared to Ranger School or West Point, it really was not physically—

It wasn't the physical challenge you were looking for.

It wasn't as physically challenging. And I knew that it wouldn't be exceptionally physically challenging. I was hopeful it would be even more. Well, I remember we had, the physical fitness test is a baseline, very easy, I don't know, 16 minutes, 2 miles, maybe even 17 minutes for basic new agents. And you know that before you get there, you have to pass the PT test before you get there. And everyone takes it day 1, the PT test. And this guy failed. He did like 20 minutes or actually didn't even finish the last lap. And so the end of day 1 training, this is his first day at Quantico, some of my classmates said, hey, let's go cheer on John. He's going to finish his last lap. And I said, well, why are we going to cheer him on? He failed the PT test. He knew the standard coming in and the guy's leaving. He's going to be kicked out of here, deservedly so. And I got in a disagreement. I'm all for cheering other people on, but he didn't meet the standard. But that was kind of the mentality of some people because the Bureau invests a lot in you to get there and they want to keep you there.

Sure.

He was kicked out rightfully so.

Yeah, yeah.

But just introduction to different, different cultures.

Yeah, yeah.

More of a gentleman's course, the FBI Academy. But yeah, 16 weeks. Good. Really good firearms training. I enjoyed that.

What do they call it? Is it Hogan's Alley?

Yeah. Hogan's Alley has the most robbed bank in the United States of America, the Bank of Hogan, because almost every day, you know, mock or, you know, actors are staging mock, you know, bank robberies and the new agents respond. It's really kind of fun to go and observe and watch the—

That's like the FBI's bread and butter, right? Is bank robberies.

Well, not the bread and butter, but it's just the, uh, the violation we kind of started off with, the bank robberies, really got our— yeah, got a name on the board.

Uh, and then you got assigned to LA?

Yes. So I was super excited. I you know, was going to work, uh, violent Colombian gangs. So Quantico on week 6, they say it's a blind monkey throwing a dart at the assignment board, right? Because you get to kind of put in either the 56 offices where I'd like to go, but then the joke is it's a blind monkey just throws it, you get whatever.

Right, right.

But I got LA, it was my top 10, so I was happy. And I got Colombian gangs, and I was like, perfect, I want to kick down doors. put these Colombian gangsters away for a while. And literally day one, I set up a show up in LA. I'm super excited. And I go see my assistant special agent in charge. And he says, Kyle, congratulations. You're working counterintelligence. I said, what? I was told I was working Colombian gangs. He said, nope, needs of the bureau. I said, roger that. I'll do whatever. So it took me like 6 months to figure out how to work a case and find the bathroom.

What kind of CI cases does LA have?

So LA has a lot of defense, you know, industrial aerospace assets and yeah, some universities there doing some research and, you know, a lot of foreign entities are trying to collect on that advanced research. So actually there's a lot of good work in LA. I really enjoyed that counterintelligence work in LA and I joined the Tried out for the LA SWAT team there, uh, with some great professionals there. So we did all the high-risk arrest warrants, uh, in LA and it got you some pretty cool gigs.

We, uh, for example, just before I, I, uh, go on, do you just want to explain to folks out there when you say the LA SWAT team, it's the SWAT team that belongs to the LA field office?

Correct.

And like, you know, because when people think of SWAT teams, they probably think of like cities, but Like the FBI has their SWAT guys also.

Yes, there's 56 FBI field offices across the United States. And actually each one has their own SWAT teams for those federal warrants. And then, and I think it's 9 offices, it's a regional or enhanced SWAT team. So they get extra training days, extra resources. And LA was one of those enhanced teams. So we would travel more and help support like other field ops like Phoenix, maybe to do a larger arrest operation. we'd send a team from LA to go support them. So I was in LA and very good reputation. Former HRT guy was the team leader there. And actually I wanted to try out so badly that you had to be an agent for 1 year in the office, right? And the tryouts were like 11 months and 2 weeks, right? So I was like 2 weeks shy and I go to see him. I said, hey, here's my background. I've always wanted to be on SWAT. I want to go to HRT eventually, but I want to do my time here in LA SWAT. There's my background. Can I try out? And he says, how much time do you have in? 11 years. He says, well, I'll see you next year.

Like that quick. And that's fine. That's the standard. That was the standard. So I had to wait another year. But I enjoyed LA. It was a great bunch of guys. And we got to do some cool arrests, manhunts for some cop killers. That was my first time going on those. And that's one of the more heightened emotional operations when you know you're going after someone who's already—

Yeah.

Not just committed homicide, he's killed a cop. And so those were the ones that you really almost get emotional thinking about because, you know, you want almost revenge and you got enough revenge because, you know, it starts to cloud the judgment and you get too emotional. There's an LAPD officer who was, I think it was an LAPD officer was killed. And we're supporting them doing other, you know, going out other target locations, trying to find this guy. But I remember that that was first time. Another time I was, remember, you got to control the emotions. You let the emotions control you. And that's when you make mistakes, clouds your judgment.

Were you normally trying to like get, you know, scoop these guys up when they're in their bed down site for the night, they're going to sleep and—

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We, Ideally, if it was super high risk, we could get a nighttime service warrant, which means we'd go in like 3 or 4 a.m., but sometimes we couldn't get that. So we'd go right at 6 a.m.

Gotcha.

But that meant, you know, 3 a.m., you know, we'd meet at the rally point at 3 a.m., do the briefing. We're rolling at 5:30. So we are literally knocking on that door at 6 a.m. And most people, the criminal type, are still asleep at 6 a.m.

And so, I mean, if If the guy is a violent felon, a cop killer, they won't let you explosively breach or mechanically breach the structure?

No, we can mechanically breach. Okay. Explosive breaching in the FBI is reserved solely for HRT.

Gotcha.

Okay. So when I was on HRT, actually was a breacher and used explosives, but not on the LA.

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Oh, yes. This was kind of fun. We— I forget the exact mission. It was just to provide security at the red carpet for the Golden Globes. I think there was some vague or heightened threat. that year. So we go and we're— they rented us tuxedos, right? So there's like, there's 45 guys on the team and we were spread out, but it's super cool. Like, I don't know, to me being at the Golden Globes and even though we're on the sidelines, just being there was neat. And then there's a retired agent who was working security for the Variety afterparty.

Mm-hmm.

So this is after we're done, like we've done our official gigs and he invites, hey, you guys want to come anyone interested in coming to the after-party? And I said, well, heck yeah, let's go. So me and several guys went in there and I'm so pumped up and excited to be here thinking like, this is cool. Like, you know, my young FBI agent and they walk through the door and then Courteney Cox walks right towards me. I thought, holy moly. And she goes, excuse me, where's the bathroom? Talk about ego, you know, going from like cloud nine to cloud zero because I just thought that she was like a waitstaff, right? My tuxedo, even though it was a random nice tux, it was nowhere near Hollywood-level tux. Another funny story, there's a Marine buddy of mine, he's so funny. He and I were chatting with this girl and she goes, what do you— she was asking us, she wrote screenplays or something, and she goes, what do you ask us— excuse me, She said, tell me about you two. And my buddy Bruce goes, well, you write movies about guys like us. Which I still think is one of the great lines I've ever heard.

Just so I'm like falling over laughter. And then her boyfriend apparently sees us, you know, talking to her girl. We didn't know she had a boyfriend at the time, but he comes over and, you know, Bruce is talking to the girl and she goes, oh, this is my— or he says, oh, my name's John. I'm her boyfriend. And he goes, oh, nice to meet you, Jay. You know, intentionally says the wrong name. And he goes, it's John. And he goes, whatever. Bruce had had a couple of drinks and so had I. So nothing happened. It was just some funny banter with a Hollywood type. So we left. But that was the Golden Globes party story.

Any other crazy LA stories that you can share?

There's a lot of good operations that we did out there. We're a pretty active team and we did a nice Trojan horse one. We were in a FedEx van.

That's cool.

Although it was several hours, you know, we're waiting on target and, you know, all kitted up and it's hot and it couldn't be running because the, you know, it alerted neighbors. And that was a pretty good one because we had to wait till the target was home, then we open up and then go rush. So we got to do some cool daytime ops, although most of them were 0600 in the morning. But that was, that was definitely interesting. One other one is we hit— we went to Cheetahs Strip Club in Vegas.

I wouldn't know an establishment like that. I mean, I trust what you're telling me, though.

And this is kind of interesting. So again, we drove from LA to Vegas and I forget the exact charge, like embezzling and some other issues, but they wanted to do it when there were the least amount of customers. And, you know, the least amount of customers in strip clubs around noon, you know, like a Tuesday. So we drove up there and we're fully in FBI attire and we go and, you know, raid the place and there's dancers on stage and we're, you know, just talk about surreal. Like there's a naked girl. you know, on stage, reality, FBI, put your hands up, up. And then, you know, guys are talking about scattering to the winds because they're caught, you know, literally with some of their pants down. Super awkward seeing the reaction. But hey, we were— and we're going after the owner of the club. We weren't going after the patrons or the dancers at all, but we had to secure them and, you know, search them. You know, even the dancers, we got to pat down quick, make sure there's nothing underneath there, as professional as we could. But I remember going to the bathroom and like seeing the trash can full of like condoms and I was like, so disgusting.

So you guys hit it because there's like all kinds of prostitution going on in this place?

Yeah, but, but they, it was something with the books and the taxes and embezzling from the office. So we wanted to get those records before they destroyed them. So it wasn't really a prostitution angle.

It makes sense that Uncle Sam's coming after you over those back taxes.

Yeah, you can't be— don't be cheating Uncle Sam.

Yeah.

And there was a bigger criminal case. I'm sorry, I don't remember more of the details of it, but yeah, obviously a federal case. It's got to be pretty significant numbers.

Yeah.

Watching him go, that was pretty unique. Well, not every day you walk into Cheetah's and see FBI agents raiding it.

And then the 9/11 attack happens while you're out there in LA, I take it?

Yes, I was, I was, I was in my home, you know, getting ready for work, 6:15-ish, whatever the first plane hit. I saw it. I thought, oh my God, what a horrible accident, right? I didn't put it together right away. And then I saw the second one hit and then I knew this is no accident. You know, we're of course under attack. And so it was a few times that I Hopped in the car and ran, you know, code lights and sirens all the way from— I lived in the San Fernando Valley down to Wilshire, you know, driving on the shoulder, hauling ass to get to the office because nobody knew what was going on at all. We thought our whole nation was under attack. So first thing I did is said, hey, start walking the perimeter of the federal building. So we're in our, our tac gear, just walking around talking to everyone driving up, like, what's your business in the federal building? were closed that I, you know, turning people away because of, uh, the attack. So that first few weeks we were just running leads. Every, you know, neighbor was calling about, oh, the guy next to me speaks Arabic.

So, okay. Do you have any evidence of criminal activity or terrorist activity? No, but we had to follow up on every one of those.

After the attacks, you guys were working like 20-hour days, right? Like they had you busy.

Yeah, but it was fun. Like nobody complained or bitched, you know what it's like when you're doing a mission that you know is righteous.

Yeah, yeah.

Like the hours invested, I mean, we got on a better cycle probably day 5 or 6, you know, because you never, you can only surge for so long, like a true 20-hour surge, you're gonna burn out everyone. So I think we got 12-hour shifts after that. It wasn't too bad.

And how did you go about applying for HRT?

So you have to submit an application and then they interview your colleagues, coworkers, your bosses. So you have to get vetted even before you're allowed to try out. Then I had 2 buddies on the SWAT team, Mike and John, and they were both interested in trying out for HRT as well. So we started out working out together. We literally mapped out workout plans and we switched off. Like, I would do Monday's shooting, then Tuesday John would do— we'd go to UCLA, run the stairs. Wednesday we'd do pool drills because we wanted to mimic every single thing, at least that we knew, that was HRT selection. We wanted to practice it beforehand and replicate as much of the stuff as we could. So when we went there, right, we were ready. So we trained together for a year, over a year, like 2-a-days.

Wow.

And on the weekends, It was brutal but necessary, right? To get your body in that kind of shape for selection. You don't have to be an Olympic athlete, but your body has to tolerate, right, an exceptional amount of physical strain. And, the more or the less your body is physically stressed, right, then the more mentally you'll perform. So, that was our obviously thought process going in. We talked to other people that had tried out. So, read Danny Coulson's book. I saw it in one of your previous podcasts in the background, No Heroes.

Yeah.

But, that and Chris Whitcomb's book Cold Zero really drove me to try out for HRT. And, that's one of the reasons that I wrote this book just to share these kind of unique fascinating stories and talk about some extraordinary people that I was fortunate to work with and read about them in those 2 books. And, that's also what drove kind of all 3 of us to try out.

And, looking back on it, do you think that was a smart way to train? Did you overtrain, undertrain, train on the wrong things?

Yeah, actually overtrained. They do a lot of dips at HRT selection, like a lot of dips. It's like one of their crazy unique—

Danny really likes dips, I guess. Yeah.

And so we did a ton of dips, but I did so much that I needed elbow surgery. So I definitely overtrained on the dips specifically because everything you do, as you know, is with your hands. Whether you're fast roping, shooting, climbing, rocking, everything, you're using those hands. And yeah, to this day, I've, I've had 7 surgeries on my elbows. 5 on the left, 2 on the right.

I'm, I'm starting to get it. It's called like golfer's elbow. Have you ever heard that? It's like tennis elbow, but it's kind of the opposite.

Yeah, the ulnar nerve.

Yeah, it sucks.

Yeah. So, I had ulnar nerve transposition surgery twice on this, once here. And then, I tore the distal bicep tendon. Yeah, my body's broken. That's what I thought.

You're telling me my future.

Yeah. Well, you look better than I do.

So, other than the dips, what was HRT selection like?

It was absolutely brutal. And, Whitcomb does a great job talking about it in his book. It was the lack of feedback which I found not troubling, but we all crave feedback, right? Especially where you pour your heart and soul.

Yeah. Am I doing good? Am I doing bad?

Yeah. And, you compare yourself against the other people you're trying out with, but you don't know, maybe do they all suck or are they all really good? Because you're paired off in running groups. And, I remember when I looked around when you first— of course, it's 3:00 a.m. wake up, we're in the gym at 4:00 for that first PT test. I just remember looking around thinking, this is the room that I want to belong to. Like, these are the people that I want to. But I really, I felt ordinary among extraordinary because everybody was extraordinary. So like, for the first time in my life, I felt like, man, I'm not special at all. Like, truly, I am just baseline. I never worked so hard to be average at HRT selection.

Right.

Because everything you're giving max effort, And, just the first PT test is max pull-ups, sit-ups, rope climb, the 2-mile run, and then the 8 flights of stairs with 35-pound vest and then 55-pound ram. And, it's all timed and you don't make any of those cuts, you're gone. And, that's just the first hour. That's just your taste. That's nothing.

And, how long does the selection go on for?

It's 2 weeks.

Okay.

Every day is brutal. Every day is 20 hours and they intentionally disrupt the sleep cycle. So even though you have on paper 4 hours of rest, they flashbang you. They can wake you up and you have to write reports. So I remember one time, you know, we're sleeping in cots in these tents and they throw bangs in. It's like right next to my ear, like between me and my former SEAL. And we're all, fuck. And then we had to go watch, and it's just to mess with you, waste your time. We watched 5 minutes of the Teletubbies, another cartoon show. And then they said, okay, now write a 302, is an FBI record of an interview. Now go write a 302 of what you saw on the video. So you're barely keeping your eyes awake.

Yeah, yeah.

Now you got to remember this horrible cartoonish thing and The yellow one said to the red one, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. And, it's just horseshit to mess with your mind and to sleep deprive you. So, that's really the hardest. And then, physical activity after physical activity, there were 2 to 3 absolutely grueling physical events because this pattern of Delta, as you know, back in '83 when we were founded, Delta came, they truly helped with that selection process. So it's brutally, but it's fair and everybody's got to go through it.

What was the hardest part for you?

Well, the hardest part was not making the team. And again, it's rigorous, right? People get hit with unlucky injuries and, you know, don't make the cuts or, you know, there's peer evaluations too, which I liked because then that helps cut people as well. But I'll tell you what happened to me or should say what my mistakes were. I don't know if you've ever done the Marine Corps Weaver.

Yes.

And you know, there's logs go up and over.

Yeah, the Army has those too.

Yeah, it's not that hard an obstacle, but it's just part of the whatever, 10 obstacles. And we're running the Marine Corps obstacle course, the Weaver. And there's former Navy SEALs, a former BUD/S instructor. He's standing there and I'd heard of him beforehand, but I'm not saying anything. I should say I'm not talking to him. You don't talk to the instructors during selection, but I go through the Weaver, and then he says, stop, you know, Blue 5. You wear pennies, remember, they don't call you by name. Blue 5, do the obstacle again. You missed the log.

In my brain, I'm thinking, if you missed the log, you would have fallen off.

Yeah, like, unless you have like a 6-foot wingspan, there's no way to miss a log in the Weaver. Like, like, literally. So my mind is like trying to process, like, there's— it can't be. Like, or maybe I did. So I I said, sir, can you tell me which log I missed? I'm confused. Blue 5, do the obstacle again. Right? So I basically challenged, right, an instructor. I should have just done it again, but I was sincerely confused, but no excuse. I was kind of calling, I shouldn't say calling them out, but I was trying to understand what the problem was. But that's not your job as a selectee. You're just supposed to follow instructions.

Well, I mean, from what you're describing to me, I mean, you're kind of like exhausted, sleep deprived. You're kind of cotton minded at that point.

100%.

Yeah.

100%. So that, that wasn't devastating. The devastating thing was when it came to the shooting event, they had, again, you do lots of shooting the whole time. And at the end, there's a steel plate competition, all the selectees against one another. And I love to shoot. I was a competitive shooter, USPSA, went to 3-gun nationals. Like, that was my wheelhouse and my forte. So I was feeling confident and I get to the finals and I missed one of the steel plates and the guy beat me. So I was pissed, right? So we go back and we're reloading magazines for the next thing, and it's just a selectee because there are only like, I think, 8 of us left at this point, you know, the 40 that started. And I said to him, hey Bobby, I'll bet you a paycheck I'll beat you next time, right? Cocky, kind of stupid, and again, dominating my ego.

Selection also not really the place for that.

Yeah, not at all.

Yeah, yeah.

And around the corner was an HOT operator listening. So he heard that and he said, oh my God, this Volnicle cocky guy thinks he's, you know, God's gift to shooting. So that got around, you know, like wildfire. And if there's any doubt, and they all, you know, obviously the team talks and, you know, compatibility is one of the key criteria. And they said, well, if there's a question mark and there's a question mark in their mind, we're not going to take him.

Amen.

So yeah, that was feedback I got. Those are out of— and talk about like 2 full weeks of essentially 24-hour days being evaluated, monitored, and it comes down to 2 30 seconds where I opened my mouth when I shouldn't have.

And so what did they tell you at the end of the course?

Well, you get very little feedback initially. It's maybe like 3 or 4 weeks. So first off, I was happy to finish, right? And me and my LA buddies flew back and we were super proud. We were 3 of the— maybe it was 11 that finished. I could be off my numbers because I had to try it the second year. Anyway, we were proud to finish and we thought we all did well. I thought I did well. I knew I did pretty well physically and I thought shooting decently and you do your rest and arrows too. And so I thought I decently showed. I didn't really think about those 2 events at all, right? The time I opened my mouth, they didn't like pop out as like super horrible events. And then you get a call from the HRT commander, you know, if you make it. And if you don't make it, you don't get a call. So my 2 buddies, John and Mike, got calls one day and they both quickly called me. Kyle, did you get a call?

Nope.

And so you find out by not finding out.

Right, right.

And that was brutal. And then, you know, I worked You know, I had a couple of back channels and they're very slow, you know, to reveal information. But that was eventually kind of the word I got back is you can't be opening your mouth, question the structure. You can't be, you know, thinking about yourself. And I realized they're right. Like, you got to put the team and the mission above your ego.

Yeah.

And that was really humbling and I needed it to really Think back, do I have the aptitude for this? And I did. I just got to control my ego and not do stupid things when you're so tired, when you're so drained. You have to put the team first always.

How long was it before you were able to go back?

Well, it took me months, just personally, professionally, I was devastated, right? Having invested so many years into this. And I remember talking to a boss, in LA and ASAC. And he could see I was depressed like 6 months later. And he said, well, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. And he said, well, you went around that roller coaster or the merry-go-round, you tried for the brass rung and you missed it. Happens. So are you going to be able to look at yourself in the mirror if you don't try one more time? And I don't know why, but that just stuck. And I started looking at myself in the mirror.

Wow. It's what you needed to hear at that moment. Yeah.

And I said, I'm going to do it. And so I started all, not all over again because I didn't let my fitness go all out the window, but I started back the 2-a-days and that grueling preparation. So I went back a year later, year and a few months. And thankfully, I learned to keep my mouth shut.

They called you back this time.

And yeah, and I got the call. And yeah, I was fortunate to be among a group of exceptional people.

And so what was the HRT training pipeline like once you get there?

So we have OTC courses, you know, we call it NOTS, New Operators Training, is 8+ months. So it's a long pipeline because we do everything, right? Lots of CQB, lots of firearms, lots of rappelling. You know, weapons of mass destruction. God, I hated that WMD stuff.

Because of the bear suit they have you wear?

Yeah. On the— yeah.

Yeah.

What did I think in the back of that breather system?

The respirator.

Respirator. Yeah. Just heavy stuff. And like, it was so unrealistic. Like, we're fast roping in, you know, £95 of gear and you can only operate really for like an hour and then I don't care. you're sweating so much, you're not mission capable much longer than that. At a certain point, yeah. Because that stuff's just so heavy and unwieldy. And then we did dignitary protection, like driver's training was in Moab, Utah. That was super cool. So yeah, basically a whole spectrum of skills. We go diving in Key West, really enjoy it. Like, I probably have some of my most enjoyable things because you're just training, right? You're just getting these skill sets. And you're not on the team yet, so you don't have all the pressure of being on the team, and you're still in that learning mode, and you're getting exposed to, oh my God, there's so many new things. So cool. Explosive breaching and tubular assaults.

You got to do free fall.

If you're on the jump team. Yeah, I didn't. I wanted to go put my name in the hat, but only like—

Is that how it's subdivided? There's like a jump team, a dive team.

So it's gone through several iterations, but There used to be just a dive team. There used to be just a course that did jumpers, but now they're spread out among the 3 teams. So every team is supposed to be theoretically mirror images of one another. But only, again, on that team is a handful of guys, maybe, I don't know the exact numbers, but let's say there's 18 guys on a team, only a third of them maybe will be freefall because that's such an extra investment of time and energy. Yeah, it is.

Especially to be good at it. I mean, it takes a lot of time.

Yeah. So our senior guys have thousands of jumps, but that's the other reason we don't send all the guys to that. But yeah, select go to all that stuff, free fall, I should say.

What was your favorite part of the pipeline?

I really enjoyed dignitary protection. Like we protected the FBI director and the attorney general. I don't know why I enjoyed, and we worked with the Secret Service, like even, and this is later on, the team got to go like Republican National Convention, Democrat National Convention. And just kind of seeing behind closed doors going to the White House. That was just unique access when you did the DIGPRO stuff. But I didn't really love the mission set, you know, taking a bullet for another guy. But we were actually the CAT team. A CAT team. So we were the counter-assault team for Secret Service. So right when the Secret Service wouldn't get in trouble, HRT is their backup. So we would go to the State of Unions, all these other high-profile events. And so we got to work and train with them at their Beltsville, Maryland location. That was kind of interesting too.

You'd be like prepositioned right there, ready to go.

Yeah, exactly.

And afterwards, when you graduated, they sent you to Scout Sniper School. When did that come about?

Well, again, it's just like everything else, needs of the Bureau. I wanted to be an assaulter, as we used to say, eating Oreos in the TOC while the snipers are out freezing their asses off. I wanted to be eating Oreos. And I know my I'm not that patient of a guy. And, you know, even though I enjoyed shooting, pistol was my mostly draw on rifle, but not necessarily a scoped heavy bolt gun. But nonetheless, the HRT gods said you'll be a sniper. So they sent the snipers to the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School right there at Quantico. Again, great instructors, but man, like the stocks, I got caught, you know. almost every time. And I remember it was like snowing and we had like all the white on. And I still remember like one objective, like I'm trying to find, confirm the target and, you know, I'm poking my head up and I'm trying to be slow and, you know, I just don't have the sniper skills, even though I sincerely tried. And like the guy, instructor, the Marine Corps instructor later said, Kyle, you look like a ping pong ball popping your head up trying to confirm the target.

And it was really that moment I realized I'm just not suited for this, even though I'll do my best. I'm going to try. I just knew long-term I was not going to be a good sniper.

And what team did they put you on?

So I was on the Blue Sierra. That was my unit. So we had 6 great guys, all good shots. You know, 3 sniper observer pairs, basically.

Oh, and so I guess like at this moment, just to take a quick pause for folks out there to talk about what HRT is. We've been having this whole conversation, but for people who have no knowledge, they can go back in time and watch an old Team House, 2 Team House episodes with Danny Colson, who's like the founder of the unit. So that's actually a really good place to go and get more information. But, but when you got there, you know, in the 2000s, what is the FBI Hostage Rescue Team? Why does the FBI have this unit?

So it was created back in '83, right, for the Olympics. And so that the Department of Justice and the FBI had a counterterrorism team on par with Delta to be the civilian equivalent in law enforcement, because it talks about in the book, but it's such a great story, I'll share it again. is that the Attorney General was touring Delta Force and looking at the layout of their gear. And he goes, where are the handcuffs? I don't know if you heard the story, but Delta says that we don't use handcuffs. That's what they said in '83 or '82. And that was, at least for the Attorney General, a light bulb. Like, we need guys that can arrest individuals and prosecute them and put them through the criminal justice system. So that was one of the main reasons it was created to have a entity that could operate at the highest levels, but yet take them into, you know, US custody and US court system.

Yeah. And I think that's what makes HRT kind of a fascinating unit to me that I don't want to compare them directly to JSOC. They're different. They have different missions, but HRT can do a lot of those types of things up to and including hostage rescue missions. And also have the like infiltration capabilities that we discussed earlier. But at the same time, all you guys are cops. You can investigate cases, you can write reports, you can take the stand and testify against the bad guys and make the arrest.

Yeah, that's what makes us so unique is— well, not just makes us so unique, but different is that we're an older age group too, right? Your average FBI agent, like 30. So we're not as young, maybe as nimble. But we have that seasoned experience because you have to be an FBI agent first, right? Prior to coming on HRT, at least have 3, used to be 5 years. Well, actually 3-year minimum, I think still. You successfully demonstrate those skills of being an FBI agent because that is the core. You're still, even though you're an HRT operator, you're still an FBI agent. So you need to be able to investigate and prosecute targets. And that's why it was such a good blend with JSOC, right? Because JSOC is— the best at finding, fixing, destroying the enemy. The Bureau is really good at investigating criminal networks and dismantling from an investigative angle a criminal network, whether it's La Cosa Nostra or Colombian gangsters. You know, Al-Qaeda is kind of very similar, right? They still have leadership structures. They got to funnel money around. And that was again why the Bureau HRT was melted with JSOC to MEDUS. to help support JSOC with that.

And from what I've read, at least, I mean, that relationship continues. I believe there were some FBI guys with the Maduro raid.

Yeah, there's HRT guys there.

Yeah.

In that first helo. So yeah, the HRT continues to work with the guys.

And that's because they needed to arrest the guy, right?

Yes.

Put handcuffs on him.

Yes. And because it's chain of custody too for evidence. Right. Because being in Iraq and Afghanistan, That was like not the Holy Grail, but we were there. God forbid if we, you know, find a piece of paper has a US phone number on it or a picture of your house that we could, you know, SATCOM that very quickly back to FBI and we could have an agent at that house, you know, within an hour, you know, from finding something on target. You know, it's pretty remarkable capability. We would help bring the target.

There's that other operation in Libya years ago where the Delta guys grabbed the guy off the street. And I believe HRT was along with that, or a couple of guys, a couple liaison.

No, there were 2 HRT operators there with them. 100%. Yeah, I know one of them very well. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's pretty interesting what you— the unit gets into both domestically but also internationally. Like you guys, there's some sort of like, is it like legal mechanism for like rendition?

Yeah. Foreign transfer of custody. It's a rendition. Help bring them back from it. Yeah.

You helped bring Maduro and some terrorists.

Yes.

Al-Qaeda guy back.

Brought him to justice.

So when you got to Blue Team, were they already like in this rotation where they're deploying overseas with JSOC?

No, that had not started yet. We were, again, there were some individual one-offs that HRT would work with some of the other units to do individual missions, but there was no full-blown deployments. And it was actually my partner and I, he was fellow West Pointer, fellow TABD infantry officer, and we were the first 2 selected to go be embedded with 275. And it was McChrystal and, you know, FBI Deputy Director said, hey, let's try this out for a full Rotation. And I think we were picked because we had the military background. We at least could speak and understand the military language. We also were experienced agents and we definitely checked our egos at the door because you know what it's like overseas, but everybody wants to go on target with JSOC. It's like a circus, right? Outside the tent, people are just dying to get in, but you got to prove yourself and you got to add value. And so we sat there for 3 weeks in Mosul. And like, I remember asking like, what are we doing here? Because they didn't want to take us on target. And we said, hey, we're, you know, we're technically and tactically proficient.

We're not going to slow you down. And we do bring some capabilities which you guys don't have. For example, MAFIS was one of them, the Mobile Automated Fingerprint ID System, MAFIS.

Oh, that was before we got the Cogent?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. So the MAPIS is like £30, but we would carry it, of course. And then we could scan fingerprints and then it would be linked to the FBI database. So if anyone had planted an IED or constructed an IED and all of our thousands of prints, we could have instant match. So that was finally like the key that opened the door after 3 weeks. And again, us living and working at the FOB, You know, trying to be of assistance without getting in the way.

What was your conception of why you were there versus what theirs was?

Well, understandably, they have— we're just a little bit reluctant because, hey, we have 2 FBI agents here with badges and notebooks and they got all the cool gear, but we haven't trained extensively with them. And are they looking at us? Like, I think that was the initial thoughts, which I totally understand. And we come there kind of hat in hand, like, we want to go on target with you. Well, everyone wants to go on target with us, right? But it was because of that MAFIS.

They thought you guys were like internal affairs.

Right. Yeah. I don't care what you got, like, short of a war crime, I don't care what you do. We're not here to look at you guys at all. And we can help, you know, with the MAFIS. And also if there's a connection to a US target, that was our 2 key selling points. And it's true, right? We wanted to have that connectivity back to the States. If we find an imminent threat that needs to be communicated to the FBI, we can have agents there at someone's door ASAP. You know, we'll bring that to the target and we're not going to get in the way. We'll stand in the corner. He tells us to stand in the corner. And yeah, thankfully the first mission turned into a second mission, turned into a third mission. And they ended up again, kind of fully integrating us towards the end. Towards the end, it was really cool. Abu Taha was like the 2nd or 3rd in command of al-Qaeda at the time, a very top-tier individual in Mosul. This is Tal Afar in 2005. It was pretty dicey and, you know, not fun. As you know, you literally— I think we may have crossed each other on the tarmac.

Yeah, probably because we relieved 275. And so, yeah, we were going Mosul, Tal Afar, all that stuff.

No, literally, we were probably on the airfield at the same time.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

Yeah. Out on the Seoul airfield.

Yeah. Yeah. But that was, yeah, I'll never forget. Well, backing up to when he first flew in on this C-130, that was my first corkscrew experience. You know, the deep dive pilot shooting out chaff. I'm holding on and I've obviously jumped out of 30 or so C-130s, but man, I'd never done that corkscrew and I remember looking over at my partner thinking, man, this is no joke. We're in the shit. And that was the first time we, at least overseas, I remember being shot at. It was on one of the Mosul day hits.

Yeah.

So tell us like, as you started getting attached to these operations and going out with 275, I mean, what was that like?

It was like surreal, right? Because I was former Army guy, MP, but You know, I understood a little bit about Rangers having to have my tab. That was one cool thing. I will say this is, you'll appreciate this being a 375 guy, is some of the younger guys hadn't got their tabs yet, right? They were whatever, E-3s just waiting, or maybe they got injured or something. And they were, everyone was always busting their chops back in the FOB. And I'd say, well, I got my tab. How about you?

Yeah.

You know, the E-3, but it was all good-natured. you know, ribbing back and forth. So we actually, you know, by the end of it, we're truly integrated. It was really wonderful to see, especially after that breaking down those barriers, understandably so, that me and my partner, we really kind of forged that template for future embed operations across JSOC, at least for FBI personnel, kind of the model doing that sensitive site exploitation on target. So we did basically the battlefield interrogation, with the MAFIS. We do the MAFIS first to run the prints, get that going. Then we hop into BIT on the MAMS or everyone on target, try to paint that intel picture. Because I kind of painted or viewed myself as almost as a forward deployed kind of S2 to help with that intel picture and help with follow-on targets. Because that was one of the, at least to me, one of the highlights, kind of felt like we really proved our value is we got some lieutenant, an IED cell maker, And I persuaded him to take us to his captain, who was just like 2 blocks away. So I remember walking through the streets and literally I'm leading, I mean, still behind the front element, but, you know, I'm holding his flexi cuffs down the middle of the street, but literally it's me with him.

And this is the whole task force following kind of this path. And I was super proud to kind of contribute and be part of that.

Doing those kinds of missions and at night. And the streets are just a little too quiet.

Oh yeah, well, you know, like when the dogs would howl.

Yeah.

Or then when you hear the morning prayers.

Oh, that scares the hell out of you when it goes off at like 3 AM.

Yeah, spooked me to no end because I mean, I never got used to the morning prayers because they're so loud.

Well, and I guess you, you and your partner did do a good job of like building the bridge, building the relationship, because when I— we got there with 375, I don't not that I was privy to everything, but I don't recall any sort of friction. Like those guys, the HRT guys we had were always coming out with us.

That's excellent. So you had 2 guys with you?

As I recall, yeah.

Excellent.

Yeah. Well, why don't you tell us about that Tal Afar mission where you guys rolled up that bad guy?

Oh yeah. So this is Abu Taha. I remember this is daytime and he was a senior ranking, you know, Al-Qaeda guy. And it was, you know, probably like noon or 1, and, you know, normally you're half racked out. And, but we got the, uh, notice, and so everyone's super excited because they hadn't found his location yet. So we're doing a daytime hit, and everybody was kind of on edge because he fought before, and like all the big guys, he said he'd never be taken alive. He'd kill himself up. So we're really worried about him having a suicide vest on. They roll out and the streets, you know, going during the day is such a different animal than at night. And as soon as you roll out of the FOB during the day, you know, you're worried about an IED or sniper or anything. And thankfully we didn't do too many daytime missions, but that one—

It's about like an hour and 10, 20 minutes from Mosul to Tal Afar.

Yeah.

And then that city was really dicey at that time. Both of them were, for that matter.

Yeah. So we thankfully didn't run into issues. We go on target. He's there with like his girlfriend. So there weren't any other fighters there. So thank you. It was a quick grab. But the coolest thing for me is we were riding back and I talked to him on target just a little bit, just confirming him, you know, and you know, that was like one of the greatest calls ever when he self-identifies and jackpot. Like, you know, that jackpot over the net. I don't know. It's just like an electrifying feeling because he was such a high value target. And that's why we were there, right? To get HVTs.

Yeah.

So that was an awesome call. Then we go back and this is what I need us moments to lose that deployment personally and professionally was we also interrogators are back in the rear at the FOB and we'd built such a relationship, good relationship with them. The lead interrogator said, hey, Kyle, you started the bit with him. I want you to continue interrogation with me here and him with Abu Jahl here in the rear. So for him to ask, you know, an outside entity, Not DOD, but an FBI agent to conduct that initial interrogation of HVT with him. That kind of showed that we proved our value and our worth.

Was this at that little black site we had there on the compound?

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah. Oh, I sure do.

Yeah.

So we were in the same— we probably slept next to one another.

Yeah. Well, we had contractors there doing the interrogation. And I don't know who else may have been involved, but I do remember, I think it was actually a husband and wife team.

There was. So, so I want to say the guy's name is Jay, but that's not his real name. He was like the boss, and there's husband and wife beneath him.

Okay.

Right?

It's— I, I don't know the chain of command.

Yeah, yeah, but I know the husband and wife. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, it's such a small world. I can picture him right now.

Yeah, no, I, I definitely spent some time in that facility. Wonderful, wonderful accommodations that they were.

It's good living.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think they did do a pretty good job of out-processing civilians when we picked them up, which happened quite a bit.

Sure.

But yeah, I wouldn't want to be a bad guy held in, in that place. Yeah, that would not be cool.

Not at all.

And so you did subsequently 4 more rotations with 275. They kind of kept you—

3 total. Yeah.

Oh, 3 total.

2 in Iraq, 1 Afghanistan.

Oh, okay.

Okay. And that's pretty interesting that they kept you with that battalion, that that rotation kept you.

I forged such a great relationship with them. And yeah, same company, CECO, each time. So I loved it. They loved it. And really that way, you know, the more you work with someone, the more comfortable you are with them. So I then the subsequent rotations, I went and did the train up with them.

Oh, cool.

So even beforehand, I did a couple of weeks with them, you know, me and the other HRT buddy. So by the time we went to Ramadi, you know, we were fully— and you'll like this Ramadi story because only a fellow, I think, Ranger appreciate it. They have How do I say this? A homemade phallic symbol, which is quite large, replicating the male genitalia.

The Rangers had this?

Yeah.

Okay, I believe it.

And they would, on target, try to stuff it in someone's backpack. But it was like, oh, you're carrying a dick on target? Like, what are you? Why would you carry it? But You never, you never would want it in your backpack, but they would on target when you weren't paying attention, stick it in your backpack. So it was like a running gag, right? And you wouldn't want to get caught with it because it's extra weight too, right? But it was very realistic looking. Someone put like a lot of time and effort into this. So it was really kind of funny and good, you know, anything to break the tension. But I'll never forget, we come back maybe on the 2nd or 3rd mission when my buddy Whit, they'd put it in Whit's backpack. Right? And oh my God, we just like howling laughing. He didn't realize. So we're back on, back on the fob, and Ryan, he pulls it out like, oh God, we're just dying laughing. And then that night we walk down— I mean, it's the morning, we're walking to the Jock, and I see outside the Jock is McChrystal's backpack. Literally says McChrystal, right?

And I said, hey Whit, let's go get it and put it in his backpack. Don't you think he'll love it? And Whit looks at me and he said, Kyle, either it'll be the funniest gag ever or we're on a plane home tomorrow. So thankfully he was the more judicious senior smarter one. Says, Kyle, we're not doing it. But we thought about briefly for a moment, but it was just good humor. But also to me, it's a sign though that they like this, respect this because they're having fun with this.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, they're not going to like pull pranks on their leaders or their coworkers if they don't like company.

Yeah, it was all good fun. I guess you guys had to have one at 375.

We didn't have it. We didn't have a fake dick to my knowledge, but there was plenty of reindeer games that got played for sure. And oh, so in Ramadi, tell us, what was this Operation Brass Balls? Speaking of genitalia.

Yeah, the task force commander that later became the SEAL Team 6 commander We are planning a daytime raid. I say we, the task force that we're supporting, of course. And we're gonna do a remain overnight, which those in themselves, most of your audience knows, remain overnight. You go out to the target and you literally stay there till the morning because we suspected or we'd seen intel, these 2, you know, bad guys are meeting at this market. And so we'll go out there in the evening and then we take over someone's house, which is always kind of risky because you don't want any violence. You don't want to—

Right, right.

Let— and then someone potentially innocent too, right? We're just picking a random house that we think has the best kind of footprint to hide us for the night. So I always felt a little bit bad for these people. But nonetheless, we go in there and thankfully they're cooperative. But I basically talked to the guy most of the night. just asking them questions. Hey, is there no one around us gonna hurt us? Anyway, and then like, you know, that was a long night just waiting there, waiting there, waiting there. Thankfully no one came, but then we roll out on foot to this market because they're only maybe 300 yards away. And as soon as we start moving out, gunfire erupts.

And I'm like, fuck.

And I've got a translator with me and we hit the dirt. But I was not in a position, I couldn't, because I had guys in front of me, couldn't engage. So we move around and then finally get to the market and the 2 guys would, they'd kill them. So thankfully it was resolved. But that was a, another daytime raid, as you know, it's kind of the hairiest.

Yeah. Yeah.

Most put you on edge, especially coming out of a local's house. That was, that was a little nerve-wracking, but thankfully it all ended well.

And then what was it like doing that job in Afghanistan? How did that differ from Iraq?

So there went Kandahar and I was a senior tactical rep in country. So actually we had, I think, 8 different tactical assets kind of underneath me. So I had 4 right there in Kandahar, but still very similar, but now we're supporting multiple units. So I was supporting 2 different, at least my team was. I was only going out on target with one, but yeah, Kandahar Mountains and, you know, going after the HVTs. So very similar to an SSE and BIT on target, really mission didn't change. I just had additional responsibilities for the other tactical assets.

And they were split up across like different units?

Yes. Yeah. The Bureau was constantly evaluating rightfully so. like which units to support, because especially as the war effort went on and everyone saw JSTOC has this, we'd like FBI agents assigned to us. So it was towards the end there. This is like '09, I think, Afghanistan, like numerous units are requesting FBI support, but just like any specialized entity with smaller numbers, we couldn't support that many elements.

Anything memorable from that deployment?

I remember when he first landed within that first 12 hours, you know, when you first get there, I was hoping to have a night off and of course we have a mission. Well, because they wanted, I take it back. Like I'd arrived with the ADVON and it was still the previous unit and the HRT guy wanted me to go with them. So yeah, it was just a, that was a Sucky first day, you know, hiking up 9,000 foot, whatever they were, with the rucks. I remember passing a couple of guys that actually had to take their rucks off because it was such a steep climb. But yeah, thankfully there was no— we did a cool water mission in Ramadi, sorry, backing up to Iraq. We went on Zodiacs up the Euphrates. That was kind of cool.

Oh yeah.

That was really cool because that was unique. Not many times At least that SECO had ever done anything on Zodiacs before at Euphrates.

Yeah, this was the— as I recall, this happened because they wanted to find a new infiltration technique. Yes.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Yeah. So I was on that mission. No, no.

What was that like?

Super cool. We work with Zodiacs and do dive training too. So I wasn't like—

You're using your Ranger School training there, getting the paddles out.

Yeah, we had motors in the back for the first part, but towards the end, we we paddled. But yeah, that was definitely kind of freaky, uh, going on the river because, well, first I'd never been on the Euphrates or any of those waterways in Iraq, but it's kind of like streets but on the, on the water. So you saw the occasional dogs howling, but thank— for the most part, there was not too many houses, like, or not too much population along the waterways. So thankfully we didn't encounter anything on the infill. And then on target was normal target. We grabbed the guy and then, you know, brought him back on the boat. So overall it was just a different unique insert, which I kind of loved just being on the water, feeling the wind against your face. Yeah.

That hot, you know, Iraq air even at night where it feels like you're staring into a hairdryer.

Yeah. You're inhaling oven fumes.

And then back stateside, you did make that transition from sniper to assaulter. And you want to talk about Puerto Rico?

Yeah. So Puerto Rico actually was a sniper. That was my last mission. There's a militant separatist guy down there, Filiberto Rios, and he'd previously shot at the FBI and was a fugitive. He hit a guy, an agent in the face. He robbed some banks, stole like $7 million. And he'd been on the run for like a decade, but he was kind of a folk hero. On a small island. Yeah, but he's a folk hero then, right? Because he's kind of anti-big government.

Right, right.

He has this weird, you know, kind of cult-like following, and he's deep in the woods. Uh, and we had intel that, you know, they found him. So, and HRT, we went to Puerto Rico, I'll say like twice a year, because there's lots of criminal activity down there and they're higher risk and it's in this rugged hillside. So we were going to do a, you know, aerial insertion, then hike to it. And so snipers, the first element goes up. I was on the second sniper team, or I should say the relief team. So the first team goes out, they set positions and they're watching for a couple of days and they confirm he's there. Then on That night though, he's walking around and they think that he may have seen one of their infill tracks or routes as he was walking around. So it's the afternoon of day 2. So they call potential compromise. So they launched the daytime assault.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And it goes south from there. So the ATRV comes, the assaulters come. vehicle right up the front and it's a shootout. Rounds start coming both ways. We're shooting at him. They're shooting. And we have one of our guys get shot really badly on the porch. He gets 2 right underneath the vest. He goes down to a knee. Same guy, Witt, then is right there at the window. He stands in front of the window to obscure fire, fires at the guy while 2 other guys go grab him, move him off the porch, you know, get him around the corner and they start providing him, you know, medical care until the ambulance can pull up. So there's a longer, like 20-minute firefight going back and forth. He then at one point shoves, opens the front door, shoves his wife out. And I was like, holy moly, there's another person inside.

Yeah.

Which we weren't aware of. So now we think it's just him. A few more rounds exchanged and now we've relieved my team, sniper team relieved it. So we're out watching. And I remember, man, the heat just sweltering, the sweat dripping down and I'm looking through the glass and, you know, after a few hours, even though we're alternating, that's tough. Again, I'm not cut out to be the sniper and you, you start to see things like, is that a shadow? Is that him? Wait, no, I gotta blink the eyes. I never—

Yeah, when you're on glass for that long, your eyes start to go.

Yeah, and even though we're switching off, you know, every 20 minutes or so, I don't care how good you are, after a couple hours even doing that, my eyes are just shot. And I remember thinking, I'm not extra mission capable, or not, I'm questionable my ability to identify the target because I would see a shadow and I, oh, that's not him, but I Didn't see muzzle flashes, so I obviously can't take a confirmed shot. But I remember that was one of the few times I got my finger on the trigger, but I, I wasn't comfortable taking a shot because, right, you always got to identify your target and his backstop. And even though we didn't think it was in the side, I didn't want obviously a horrible mistake to happen, right?

Yeah.

Which we've had, you know, in the past. And so I, I didn't shoot, thankfully, or didn't even I should say, never saw anything that warranted it. But I remember that was another kind of needle in the— adding to like, or not, this is a camel kind of broke the straw that broke the camel's back of me not wanting to be a sniper. And this is after that, I came back and said, yeah, it's just not cut out.

How was the firefight resolved?

So the next morning now, so it goes silent. Right after that.

So he's barricaded inside the house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're basically— sorry, around the house. And we finally got a robot like the next morning. My timeline's accurate. Maybe it was later that day. I don't remember exactly, but finally get a robot. And we— because now we have no— we're trying to call him out, trying to give commands, nothing, no response at all. And one of the guys thinks he'd hit him when he was— he saw a glint of his outline when he opened a refrigerator door. He was backlit by the refrigerator light and he took a shot. So he did say, I think I—

So they're thinking like maybe he bled out.

Yeah, maybe bled out now because now it's been so many hours. So send the robot in, robot sees him, he's on the ground, and the robot, you know, has a claw and it, it kind of rotates him over and his hand is rigor mortis. His hand goes like this. And in classic HRT fashion, one of the guys watching the video says, oh, I think he has a question. So yeah, that, that operator did get him. That was the, that was the end of that. Yeah. But we didn't know it. I mean, yeah, yeah. Until many, many, many hours later.

You guys are cops following procedures. I would've been like, throw approximately 100 flashbangs into that house.

Yeah.

Level it out.

Yeah. Yeah.

Done screwing around at that point.

I did love that ROE overseas. Yeah. Because it wasn't my responsibility. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, not to be like flipping about it, but yeah, the FBI doesn't use hand grenades. Like, that's not a thing, you know?

Although we— and I'm overseas. That was the only time.

Oh, they let you carry?

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Makes sense.

I don't know if that was officially Bureau policy. Let me just caveat that. But we carried them. I don't think they're gonna come after me now.

And tell us about Detroit.

Yeah, Detroit was a ruse operation. There was a criminal who was connected to some— I want to say, I forget which terrorist network, but he was— he and his 4 other conspirators were meeting an FBI undercover agent. So we set up in this warehouse. And that we were going to arrest him in our house, right away from his home and in our controlled environment. So he comes in and we've, you know, we've got perfect position set up with COVID and we've got a canine and we've got it wired for audio and video. And, uh, they come in, they're right where we want them. The undercover gives a signal, he's out of the way. So we come out.

Yeah.

FBI, hands up. Going to arrest. You know, show us your hands. And then 4 guys immediately complied. Get to your knees. Okay, go face down. He goes down, but then his hands are in his pockets. Everyone else has their hands spread out on the floor. Show us your hands. Show us your hands. He doesn't do it. Team leader says, all right, we're going to release the canine. And then he walks up or moves up with the canine handler and says, You have 3 warnings. We're going to release K-9. We're going to release K-9. Show us your hands. So no doubts, clearly communicated. He doesn't respond and he releases Freddy. Freddy is our K-9. And Freddy goes in, grabs his arm. And then he, with his other arm, pulls out a pistol, of course, from his pocket. And he shoots at us, shoots at Freddy. And so Freddy took a bullet for me and the other 7 guys there, you know, we eliminated the threat. But Freddie, even though we had, you know, HRT helicopters standing by and they, the medics had pre-coordinated with the vet, like when they'd already been to the vet hospital, everything was set.

He was literally in the helicopter within like minutes of being shot on the operating table within another couple of minutes and they couldn't save him. So the K-9 handler, Stan Wattis, or a canine handler. He wasn't Freddy's at the time, but he did a tribute to Freddy. I have it in the book, a graphite drawing. And Freddy's one of the canine heroes that, just like so many other canines, gave their lives to protect their teammates. So I want to remember Freddy.

What kind of dog was he?

A Belgian Malinois.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Just a great, ferocious dog. And he loved being part of the team. Like, he loved— like, when we're We get kitted up. Like, he knew that was his job and he loved being with us. And that was a painful day.

Yeah. No, I'm sorry. As you know, it sounds like, you know, you're firing at a cyclic rate here as an HRT guy. What sort of caught your interest about, well, frankly, leaving HRT and going to the crisis or the, yeah, the Crisis Negotiation Unit?

Very tough. It was my wife, a lot of pressure. We were going to— It's the op tempo. Yeah, because we were gone most, or especially deployments years, like 50% of the time. Really hard. I had 2 boys at the time and I loved it. Like those missions and the people were extraordinary. Again, I truly felt like I was just average. I never worked so hard to be average just to be on that team. And I love what we did and what we got to do, but it took a massive toll on my family and my body.

Sure.

I've had 11 surgeries and it's just a cumulative effect. And where's my wife and I were going to Hawaii and we're like packing the car up, ready to go to the airport, and we got alerted for a mission. And it's like December 23rd, I think. So we're going for Christmas.

Oh.

I said, honey, I got a mission. And she goes, what are you doing? And this is what we train for, right? It's what we live for. And I said, the team needs me and I need the team. And she goes, well, this is going to be one of your last missions. You're going to have to decide. And so that was really like a knife deservedly so.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, in my heart.

And I wanted to still like do a job that had impact, but it wasn't as risky because my wife, like, she— I don't know about you, but like, I didn't worry that much. Like, I either knew it was my time that I was going to get taken out.

Yeah, yeah.

Or not. Because, you know, you worry about it too much, it'll occupy the time. So I actually didn't process it. But my wife, every night, Just thinking about it.

Yeah.

Think about it. Just torture her. So the cumulative effect of all, and my body just breaking down, I could totally put the 7 surgeries on my elbows. So I thought, all right, I'm going to transition. These guys are incredible what they do. You know, we, you know, the tenets of a hostage rescue, speed, surprise, violence of action. Right. I love that. And we persuaded, intimidated, through the dominating rooms. Well, negotiators, they slow things down. They talk about emotion, right? Words were their weapons. So it's a totally different way to look at a crisis, a totally different way to solve problems. So I really like that creative angle because now I've learned there's really 2 ways, more than 2 ways to look at how to solve crises and try to persuade others to influence them. Not through force. Sometimes you have to. I get that. And that's right and dandy. But if we can avoid that, or if I can avoid— this is how I viewed it. If I can avoid sending my teammates back down or entering a house where guys are going to shoot them, right, I'm going to do everything in my power to do that, to protect them.

So that was kind of the reasons and background.

And did you have to apply for that unit also, go through specialized training and so on?

Yeah. So there's a 2-week negotiation course for FBI negotiators, a basic one. And so I'd go through that and then the unit chief of— so you previously had Gary Nestor on, the first FBI CNU unit chief. So it's his actually 3, 1 or 2 people after him. I'd met with him several times and say, I'm interested in coming to the unit and, you know, kind of nearing the end of my time. And so we talked, I talked to the other, and I knew that, had known those negotiators for years because you deploy with them.

Right.

And so got more and more integrated, did some training with them. And thankfully, you know, they then accepted me into the unit. So there is an application process you got to apply, but I kind of had the in just because I was there and had done it. So, but I enjoyed it. I really, I relished kind of that mental chess game now.

Yeah. I mean, the 2 weeks, I mean, that must have been just an introductory course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just the first introduction course.

You start taking like, like, like psychology courses. I mean, what, what's the background of one of these guys?

Yeah.

So we've worked with a behavioral analysis unit as well. But yeah, there's several like extracurricular activities and training that you would do. So like we sent guys in that unit to the London Metropolitan Police Negotiator Training. So they sent me there for 2 weeks. So I did that for 2 weeks. Then I went to other 1-week courses. You really learned how to effectively communicate.

Mm-hmm.

And more than that, like be a good listener. Because I, I know I wasn't like the best listener. So this is fascinating. When my middle son was 11 years old, after I'd been in CNU for a year. He said, Dad, you speak to us differently after you've been a negotiator. I said, shut up, kid. No, I didn't say that, but I was like just stunned that my 11-year-old son was so observant.

Yeah, yeah.

That picked up on it. And I didn't consciously choose the way I was speaking. But yeah, through the communication, you know, training through the drills, and we did a lot of role-playing, a lot of exercises. of fake negotiations. Like, also, like, we did have— you could call in and help with suicide hotlines and do other techniques to help you learn to empathize with people. So it really takes you at least 2 solid years. And the normal— I was kind of lucky because normally you'd be a field negotiator, like field SWAT. You normally do that for 5 or 6 years and then come back to CNU.

Gotcha.

So I was very, very fortunate, lucky. To just do it in there.

And if I recall correctly from reading some of these books, there are historically at the FBI been seriously big tensions between the negotiators and the HRT guys.

Well, you go back to, right, Waco. Yep. And unfortunately, massive disconnect between the two. Like they weren't even co-located and tactical didn't listen. The negotiators didn't really see the need or value to it because tactical thinks like tactical, right? They want to use kind of themselves as the tool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's quicker, right? You're more efficient and the job's done. And I understand that from a tactical perspective, but now if we can resolve it, if we can get like the Branch Davidians, we can get even what they got, 25 kids out. Like the negotiator saved 25 kids' lives.

Right.

Like, that's remarkable, right? Those 25 people now, and I could be off on the numbers, but living like the rest of their lives due to the negotiators. So the fact that that disconnect like that bothered me, and there were significant changes the FBI made after that. So I made the Critical Incident Response Group to be umbrella to house both, and they did work together, but there still remains, and even probably to this day, a little bit of tension between the two. Because they just think differently. And unless you've been in both worlds, right, they each speak different languages. And I, one of the reasons they took me is that unit chief said, I really want and need someone who has an HRT background so that we have more credibility with HRT. So really his decision too. And Gary Nestor also recognized that too. And he brought on the first former HRT guy, but it's very rare.

Begin bridging that gap there.

I'm sorry?

To bridge the gap between the two.

Yes, to actually— absolutely. To bridge that gap.

And you got involved in some, like, pretty high-profile operations as a negotiator.

Yeah. First, the big one. Well, Michael Scott Moore was a big kidnapping case. He was kidnapped by Somali pirates. for 2 and a half years. And that was the first time negotiating with a pirate. But yeah, I've negotiated with pirates, kidnappers, and terrorists.

So they sent you, were you like working with like SEAL Team 6 over in Somalia and trying to work that?

So we did work with those guys. This was an exceptionally long case and those guys were great. I remember like a year into it where The pirates demanded— well, first off, he was kidnapped, and then Jesse Buchanan was saved, like, 2 days later.

Yeah.

And so his ransom, or, yeah, Michael Seymour's ransom was $20 million. And, like, it was, like, comical. Like, we support the mother, right? The US government doesn't pay any ransoms, but we support the mother. And so I'm right there with the mother. Marla's fantastic. individual, like super stoic, awesome. But she doesn't have $20 million. It's not even a realistic sum. So the first like year was really difficult trying to find like a reasonable, even bargaining position with these pirates.

Where did they snatch Michael up from? What was his deal?

He went to Somalia to write a book about piracy.

Oh, shit.

And his bodyguard driver turned on him.

I guess he got the experience to write the book. I mean, there's that. Probably not the way you wanted it, but So how did you guys resolve that one?

So there was a great idea. So he was taken aboard the Naham 3, which is this Taiwanese fishing vessel that they had also hijacked, and they had several other prisoners on board, and they like had killed the captain. The captain's in like the freezer.

Jesus.

So these are, you know, brutal individuals. And there were some SIGINT assets. This is one of my trips down to Dam Neck. Because we're— this is before there's like a true fusion cell. Now there's a hostage recovery fusion cell, which is great.

Yeah, sure.

But this is before that. So we're just on our own kind of collaborating and working together. But they invited us down, uh, and Vance and me, my kind of mentor in CNU. Anyway, they had, I thought, one of the most brilliant ideas ever. We had SIGINT coverage and he was fishing on the side of the boat, like every day around 3-ish. And they said, well, what if he jumps in? Can he swim? I said, yeah, he was a surfer. He was a California surfer. I said, I almost guarantee he'll swim. And so they started developing a plan. I won't go into too much details. You can figure out pretty easily what their plan was. And again, where I left, we released after headquarters, we got this brilliant plan. We love it. Fully supportive. Like, let's do it. We're going nowhere in negotiations. We can't get him out for the $20 million. And then like a week later, right? So now we're spinning up. NSC level is considering it. He jumps off the side and tries to escape on his own.

Oh, so you guys didn't have like comms, like even clandestine?

We tried to get a message to him and we literally were crafting the message and putting it— it was en route to get to him. within like a few days, we think. So literally he didn't know it. And I can't—

Right. Yeah. He had no idea.

Yeah. We were, we were pretty close to getting him the message and the boys would have had an incredible mission there.

There was a— years ago when everything was really going south in Libya, the Swiss government arrested a member of the Gaddafi family.

Okay.

And so the Libyan government responded by arresting 2 Swiss businessmen in Libya, and they were being held near the coast. And they let these guys— they were on house arrest. It wasn't that bad. And they were being allowed to swim in the Mediterranean.

Okay.

They'd go out there, go for a swim. And the Swiss Special Forces guys got tasked like, hey, figure out how to get these guys out. And they came up with a plan that they'd rent a sailboat, come down the coast, jump off the opposite end of it with rebreathers, And then come in and grab these guys. They'd have oxygen tanks and rebreathers for them, put them on that, and then swim back to the boat. And it never got approved for political reasons. I think the Swiss probably paid some money and got the right way. But I mean, it's interesting. Maybe they could have pulled it off. Yeah.

Again, I think because the main thing is if you're comfortable in the water, right?

And him being a surfer, I felt That, that was one of the things because one of the guys had like maybe like a heart condition or something and he didn't feel that he could swim underwater. Yeah, that was part of why it didn't happen.

Yeah, that'll nix your plan. But I love it. I love the creativity.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Outside the box thinking and like it would work and it's relatively low risk by comparison.

Oh yeah.

By comparison, fast roping operators onto a boat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you got involved in the aftermath, the near aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. Yes.

So on Friday, of course, the bomb goes off. And then Thursday, Vera releases the pictures and the bombers are identified. Then they go kill an MIT police officer and there's a big fight out in Watertown. And so I was flown up Friday morning from Quantico as the kind of senior FBI negotiator, even though there's much more senior people than me. But we, you know, we actually— we had Mark Thundercloud in a different location in Boston. He was, uh, with HRT hitting another location, uh, but I was at the Watertown Mall. And if you remember when he was identified, people went on the media like his uncle said, they're losers, these guys are horrible. His aunt went on and like she said, oh, they're set up by the police, right? Yeah. Yeah.

She was a nut.

Yeah, she was nutty. And then his wrestling coach actually went on CNN and spoke positively about him. So even though no one thought there'd be a negotiated resolution, I didn't think there'd be a negotiated resolution, right? But it's my job to be prepared just in case. So I called the wrestling coach, spoke to him for like an hour, learned his nickname and some background details on him. And I said, thanks, man. We'll see you tonight, Friday night. You know, as we're getting set here, uh, I said, what's—

This is the younger cousin?

Yes, the younger brother.

The brother.

Yeah, they're 2 brothers.

So the younger one, uh, did you guys know that the older one had been killed yet?

Well, yes, we knew cuz he'd run him over, but that wasn't publicly released yet.

Gotcha.

Gotcha. Which is a kind of key point later I'll get to. So I'm at the Watertown Mall and Remember, the city's— the nation's on edge, right? Because after the firefight with the police, the younger brother drove over his older brother and then fled. And then the city's on lockdown. They're looking for him, can't find him. City goes off lockdown at 6 PM Friday. Homeowner goes in his backyard, sees blood on his boat. He calls 911. Then hundreds of officers self-deploy to the backyard. On Franklin Street.

And we all heard it like on live television.

Yep. You heard those hundreds of rounds.

Get the Bearcat up.

Yeah. And I'm like a quarter mile away. And I thought, man, I've been in Fallujah and Mosul and Tal Afar and I haven't heard that since being overseas. And I thought, oh, thank God it's probably done though. At least, you know, the guy's killed. Because we were staged, like there's thousands of us, probably 2,000 in Arsenal Mall. That was the law enforcement staging area and HRT was there. And we heard that and again, kind of relieved thinking, okay, good, it's all done with, we'll get to go back home. And then I see the HRT, like S3 running towards the team, which is like 100 yards away in the parking lot. So I thought, man, that guy never runs. Right? Like I literally thought he's only running because they got the mission. So I run over there and sure enough, they said, HRT is 8 guys, go deploy. and take charge of the site. It's total chaos and mayhem. And so I was there with the team leader and I said, hey, I'm a negotiator at the time. I said, hey, why don't you let me hop in? And he goes, Kyle, we're not going to need a negotiator.

And I said, I get it. And this is the guy I'd worked with thankfully for 8 years. So I was able to gently push back. And this is exactly, I think I was just in the right place at the right time with the right background. And I said, I think you should take me just in case. It's better to have me and, you know, I'm not going to get in the way than not have me and need me. He goes, all right, all right, hop in the last vehicle. So it's like gentle nudge, but—

Yeah, yeah.

Very glad I did. And then my 2 other negotiation partners, they follow in a separate vehicle. So like 9th in the convoy and we drive short distance, but then we're hit by all the other traffic. So then we got to dismount and now we're climbing fences. And my 2 partners, we'll just say they're healthy negotiators. Mark and Vance, just great guys, but they can't scale fences. And so I'm now all alone, but we're at the site now. And meanwhile, the BARC had to come up. They tried to flip him out using the arm, which is a good idea.

Is this when he's hiding in the boat?

Yeah.

Gotcha.

So he's still in the boat. Hundreds of rounds are fired. Someone says ceasefire. They hold their fire. Massachusetts State Police Bearcat comes up, tries to flip him with its arm out of the boat, but he can't. Doesn't have enough leverage. They command him to come out, come out. It doesn't have any effect. And that's right then when we arrived. And the team leader, I'll call him Big D, just did a magnanimous, awesome job, like instilling order into the chaos. This is in Patriots Day. Actually did a decent job of it because it was, it was a horrendous, like, talking about the perimeter.

The Boston PD was pretty overwhelmed, I think.

Well, this isn't even— yes, and Boston PD, this is out of their jurisdiction, right? They were there and then they don't have jurisdiction there. So imagine like, like literally 40 different agencies from Massachusetts State Police to— I saw Department of State guys there.

What?

With a vest and a gun. I thought, what is Department of State? Like, I didn't say anything verbally, but like my mind, like, the fuck are you doing here?

Yeah.

So it was like a circus of all circuses. And obviously I've been in a few circuses, but this was like total mayhem because there was no command and control. The 360 perimeter, everybody's— and they'd only not only missed him, they missed the boat. Like, it's embarrassing to professional law enforcement officers to say this, but their rounds, I remember walking up seeing in like the garage behind him.

Jeez.

And I thought, what were you people shooting at? Right? Because we're responsible every round we fire as FBI agents. So Big D, then he still instills order into the chaos. Great job. But did it without like being a jerk, but, you know, definitely taking charge. Like I've rarely seen someone, I've never seen someone do it so well. Just an amazing job. And he says, all right, we're going to deploy some 40 Mike Mikes, but some CS gas. Well, well, flashbangs. Oh, gotcha. Sorry. Uh, into the boat. And we got overhead, uh, MSP, Massachusetts State Police helicopters got FLIR, so we can see a warm body, but there's no response. So we know there's at least one warm body, but we don't know if he's—

And the fear is that there could be more explosive devices.

And yes, so as much as he killed 4 people and seriously wounded 250 others, I wanted him dead as much as anyone. But remember, at the time we didn't know, is there another terror cell in New York City or another bomb waiting to go off in D.C.?

Right.

So our goal is to take him alive for that reason and that reason alone. Right. What other intel is out there risking American lives? But like the desire, the thirst for vengeance was palpable. And that's why I think those so many officers kind of fired and sympathetic fired. Also. So anyways, Derek does the, or excuse me, the team leader does flashbangs, no response. And now we're kind of all just sitting there. At least I'm thinking like, man, what are we going to do next? Right? We break every level. We've done lethal force. Yeah. Yeah. And normally a pyramid, as you start with physical presence, then you go verbal commands and you go physical force, then you go lethal force. Well, now we've started at the top. We have nowhere to go. And word comes down, the FBI director said to negotiate. And then I heard on the radio, Kyle, you're up. And for a moment I thought, man, this sucks. I don't have my 2 partners. Again, I'm not concerned with my safety, but I'm concerned that every word I'm about to say is going to be scrutinized and questioned, every word I don't say.

For sure.

And I got 400 officers here listening to my every word along with FBI headquarters and God knows who else. I read CNN's down the street. So I had to take, as I start walking to the house, because I thought I'd get a second story vantage point. I literally paused though at the entryway and I just took 3 deep breaths and I just said, you can do this, right? I've been in shooter situations before. Go do your job. It just took me like 5 seconds, but again, just that quick kind of self-pep talk. And then went up and then put my hands against the window and said, my name's Kyle. I'm with the police. I'm here to talk with you. And for 10 minutes, it was like silence. So I'm trying to not sound like a parrot, and which is really hard when you're having a one-way conversation with someone you don't even know.

Right.

And I said, hey, if you can't hear me, like, you know, bang on the Floor, move the tarp. Just let me know you're alive. And I'm trying to frame the conversation from his perspective. I know you're probably hurt, scared, confused, demonstrate empathy. I'm talking about this path to influence in the book, but I'm using these steps, which we learned as negotiators. And then finally, after 10 minutes, he says, water. And I said, perfect, in my mind. And I said, I've got buckets of ice-cold water for you.

Yeah.

It's outside the boat. You got to come off the boat to get the water. And he said, I can't move. I said, you got to move. And like headquarters is calling for updates. And thankfully by now Vince and Mark had arrived and they're next to the team leader. So now they're coordinating and on scene as well. So he actually called me and I saw my phone ring. I'm all, Vince, why are you calling me? I'm right in the middle of this. He's all, Good job. Bring up the coach. Oh yeah, thanks. I hang up on him. He calls back. I hang up again. He calls back. He's all, hey, idiot Kyle, I'm going to be your coach via the phone. Just put me on mute. But I was so maniacally focused.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I didn't even think about it. So I kept him way back there and he was real quiet, but he gave me a good input at a couple points. And after 20 minutes, I brought up the coach, which I should have brought up earlier, but I said, hey, I spoke with your coach today. I spoke with Coach Payak, and he wants to see you come out of this alive. And then when I said his nickname, that was like the magic moment. I said, I know who you are, Jihar. I know who you are. And his like head bolted up from the bottom of the boat. It's the first time I saw like a physical reaction from him. And so he knew that I knew who he was. And then That's kind of what opened the door to him moving. He said, I can't move. I said, you got to pull yourself, move. So he moves like an inch. I can't move anymore. I said, finish the match. You got to finish the match. And I said, I also wrestled. All right. I wrestled in high school. I know what it's like to be alone on the mat.

And so that connection point of the wrestling, and again, me doing my homework, being prepared, priming myself for that moment, which no one thought was possible. But that resulted in, you know, an hour and a half later, he's on the side of the boat and he's got one leg over. This is probably that iconic picture, you know, and he's got the lasers on him and he's got just his right, like knee and back or the right knee and below is inside the boat. And he says like he's hurt badly. He can't move that leg over. And I said, you got your 8 feet above, just move it over and just kind of follow the grass and then we'll get you medical care. You'll get to see all the people outside the boat that love you. You get food, water, medical care, all those good things. If you stay in the boat, you die in the boat. Those are some things I was using to encourage him off. Anyway, he said, I can't. And then he like falls forward. Like he's almost losing consciousness now. Then he comes back up and I said, come on, get off, you know, move your foot over.

He says, I can't, I can't. He like falls forward.

Was there some prohibition against you like grabbing him by the sleeve at this point?

And well, what's going through our mind is, is this a trap or is he truly Like exhausted. And so I'm talking to my team leader and I said, I think he's, I believe him from my perception. I have a pretty good view of him. And now he's compliant subject. He's listening to me. Like I had him lift up his shirt to show that he has no, nothing on his chest. And he's following my directions. I said, I think we should go grab him. He said, all right. So talk him through this, explain what's going to happen. So Big D again, talking about magnanimous job. He doesn't have pick HRT guys to go put the cuffs on him. He picks 6 locals and he says, I'm going to go up with you guys, but I want you guys to have the honor of cuffing him. Like, that's true leadership. Yeah.

He's willing to step into the background.

And give, again, the credit and honor to others, which are just so magnanimous. Just what a great leader. And he knew, you know, HRT were going to fly back the next day, but this is the locals' arrest, kind of Boston's arrest to make. So he walks up with them. I talk him through it. Hey, you guys are going to come listen. By the way, you see the red dot on you, the laser? Yeah. Listen to me and you'll live. If you make a further movement, we're going to kill you. We're going to shoot you right where the red dots are. So it was very clear, like laying out the consequences for noncompliance. And I said, do you understand? Yes. Then I said, okay, they're going to move forward. They moved forward, basically yanked them off. Cuffed him. They used Sean Collier's cuffs, the MIT police officer that he and his brother killed, and then shoved him in the ambulance. And then Team Leader said, hey, Kyle, will you ride with me in the ambulance? Sure, because we got to transfer custody. You know, now he's in officially FBI custody. Uh, and then like headquarters is calling me.

I talked to the boss quick as assistant director, uh, explaining, hey, we got him, he's, he's alive. Is he conscious? Well, he's going in and out of consciousness. And it's like a 10-minute ride to the hospital. All right, you're going to be met by 2 FBI agents there. Take him to surgery and they'll take him from you in surgery. Got it. You know, hung up. And then I sit back down, you know, next to him and he reaches out and grabs my hand. And the bomber asked me, how's my brother?

Oh, is that the first time that came up?

Yes. So now I'm in a dilemma. Do I tell him? You ran over your brother. You killed him. Or do I withhold that information knowing that we want to know about the more bombs and other stuff? We're going to have a lot more questions for you.

Right.

I don't want to ruin rapport or also tell them a lie that later could come back and make the Bureau look bad. So I said, I'll chuck them for you because I didn't want to have a good answer. I didn't want to lie to them, but I also didn't want to tell them the truth yet. And then we got to the hospital and escorted him into the surgery. Pretty cool. There's 2 FBI agents in like surgical gear. That guy's wearing a, you know, the badge around his neck. And actually, I recognized one of the guys from headquarters I've seen before, just nodded and they took him into surgery. And that was the end of the Boston Marathon bombing. Wow.

And that cat is chilling in supermax now, isn't he?

He got the death penalty, but of course he's appealing it.

And yeah, yeah.

But yeah, he's Sitting in supermax.

That's a wild one.

Yeah, that was crazy.

And the other, like, high-profile operation you were involved in, or one of them as a, as a negotiator, the famous Bunker Boy rescue.

Boy in the Bunker was one of the most challenging FBI kidnapping operations in our history. Yeah. Crazy, deranged guy goes on a school bus. Kills the bus driver, very heroic bus driver. I should back up. Like, this guy goes in the bus, is pointing the pistol at the guy, you know, from same distance as us here. And the bus driver, Charles Pullen, heroic— heroically refuses. He says, hey, you're not going to take the kids off my bus today. Like, what a just incredible—

Yeah, balls.

Balls and says no. And he's, you know, it's like a 3-minute video from inside the bus. Truly difficult to watch, but I've watched it 100 times and He does end up killing him, but just, I always like to mention that because true American hero there trying to defend his kids. And he grabs the first kid next to him and takes him, Ethan, to his underground bunker, which he'd spent over a year preparing this lair. And he had IEDs, additional weapons in there. And it was all set up for this confrontation with law enforcement.

Yeah. What did he have some kind of like grievance with the town or something like that?

Well, he hated government, especially big government, and he'd had multiple interactions with law enforcement. And he had a— he was an injustice collector is what BAU described him. And he had a pending charge of brandishing a weapon, uh, to be in court like the next day. So we think that was the final trigger which led to this. But he had a series of assaults and domestic abuse. He was a horrible—

It's— yeah, it's probably pointless for me to apply my logic to it, but I'm thinking like, okay, you don't like the government, so you kidnap a kid off a school bus. How does that work?

Yeah, it's— and that's a great way to put it. And I try to tell people that because I get asked this all the time. You can't apply logical thinking to what he did. Yeah. Uh, because he, he wanted an audience to tell his story about all his grievances. So in his mind, he was fully justified to kill the bus driver and take this kid hostage To tell his story of grievances. Yeah, it's—

So tell us about CNU and HRT getting spun up for this thing.

So yeah, I remember my partner and I, Vance, same guy in Boston, really was my mentor, just probably one of the best negotiators in the world. And he and I got the tag for the mission on day one when it just happened on Monday. We saw like the video and we met with a behavioral analyst and we just watched that and I remember we were debating with them and they said, well, maybe he's taking the 5-year-old for sexual gratification because he also wrote a note which we found on the bus. And we looked at the note, there's no mention of wanting the kid for that, and there's nothing in the video to indicate that. And I remember it was the first time like professionally disagreeing, like, no, we— I don't see that. We don't see that.

This is— Yeah. And amongst his long rap sheet, right?

Yeah. Horrible as a guy is, like, there's no behavioral indicators, right? We always That's what I learned as a negotiator. Like, you base your assessment off a behavioral indicator. You don't just base off a gut feeling.

Right, right.

Like, there's no behavioral indicators that he wanted to molest a child. Although again, we had to be prepared, God forbid, but just an initial assessment. And then that night we actually got the order to deploy. We're going to fly out in the morning. So we flew out the second morning and we rolled with them on the plane and, you know, we're going over his back and HRT is doing all their gear prep on the plane. And when we landed, it was Midland City, and thankfully we had our own, you know, the Bureau plane. It was always nice to fly into the nearest airport, although it was nicknamed, or it was named Freddy 2 in honor of Freddy. But I always felt like whenever the thing flied, I don't know, this is a tangent, but it sounded like an old washing machine.

Is this like a Gulfstream?

Rattling? No, no, it was like a 737.

Oh, no kidding. Okay.

But like a 35-year-old 737, which sounded like a washing machine. Like you'd hear these moving parts every time you landed and took off. We always thought it was going to blow up on us. But anyway, we were on Freddy 2, I believe, for that mission. And yeah, it was a really, it's just an interesting story because he was so prepared and again, had IEDs on the property. He had one inside the bunker. That was remote wire detonated to outside the bunker. And then inside he had another one, which was like a, like a .22 against a shotgun primer into a bigger IED. So he had both those IEDs he threatened to detonate if anyone came down. It was just one way in, one way out. So talk about like the worst fatal funnel ever. And we had structural engineers, we had Army ground penetrating radar.

Yeah.

Like we had almost every asset you can dream of to help us, but there was no way in. If we tunneled from the side, it would potentially collapse in these £2,000 of dirt.

And the HRT guys built like full-scale mockup, right?

Well, one of the former SEALs on the HRT called Gulfport Seabee Battalion. And this is like Tuesday and says, hey, can you guys help us build a mockup? And how great is this? Within like 3 hours, I don't know how long it takes to load up. They had like 2 18-wheelers driving from Gulfport to Midland City. And that day the Seabees are making the mockup. Like, incredible. Those guys rock. As you've seen what they do overseas, it was just awesome. So they're building the mockup. So we're doing rehearsals, HR2s and rehearsals. But I was going over there just checking out as well, just to get an idea of it because we were using negotiation with him to gather intel for the creation of the bunker. Right. Because he would kind of boast about it. And we interviewed all the neighbors, of course, because we're trying to gather every bit of intel.

Right.

For—

What construction materials did he buy?

Exactly. We're going through purchase history, everything you can think of, because we had hundreds of people on the ground. I actually remember like day 3, I think we have daily updates with the director. And, you know, in there was like the special agent in charge, the HRT commander, And then Vance was the lead negotiator. I was kind of his deputy, the BAU rep, and like the sheriff. So that was like the key kind of leadership group, which really helps as like a negotiator. So for me to be even involved, even though I was the deputy, it was a great feeling to know that I kind of had a seat at the table. Right, right. Which I felt like, I don't know, it just was like a cool professional moment even to be there.

How did you and Vance get comms with the Oh, wait, so— That guy.

The Atlanta— this is that night one. We weren't there yet. Atlanta— excuse me, yeah, Mobile called Atlanta FBI to help them initially. So before even HRT got there, some Atlanta negotiators were there.

Gotcha.

And they successfully— he'd set up the speaking tube. It's such a crazy thing. He dug a 170-foot underground, like, foot-deep PVC tube speaking apparatus so that if, you know, the bunker's over there 170 feet away, he would talk to people. So that was where he first told law enforcement. He called 911, by the way, after he drops the kid in the bunker, he comes up, calls 911, says, talk to me at the speaking tube.

Come to my speaking tube.

Yes. And so first responders do that. Bill Raftery is the first negotiator to stand at the speaking tube and they're just talking to him. And of course that night we bring up an SABT, a bomb tech, And they x-ray it and what's in the speaking tube? An IED.

Oh shit.

Yeah. So they were talking. So the negotiators that night persuade him to accept a throw phone as a separate communication device. And like any good negotiator does, you phrase it from his perspective, benefits him. And so they delivered that to him. So that was how we were talking to him. Gotcha.

Gotcha.

So it was safer and obviously better for us not to have someone stand up that IED. We just surround it with sandbags after that.

And what was, as you get Um, can, you know, you and your buddy Vance open up communications from your end? I mean, what's your assessment of this guy?

Well, it was day 2. I should back up. When I first saw that Ethan was the 5-year-old, he needed medications. So he needed— he had Asperger's syndrome, uh, and he needed 3 times a day meds. So the negotiator is able to talk him into letting us go, tactical go up to deliver meds 3 times a day. So we were able to do target analysis 3 times a day. So day 2, I saw like, you know, 4 HRT buddies go with the 2 local sheriffs. And I remember watching that. I thought, well, wait, they're talking to him. Even though we have the throw phone, they're talking to him in the bunker lid. So I went to the HRT commander and said, hey boss, like anytime there's communications, you should have a negotiator there. Let me go be the coach to that sheriff's deputy to have continuity with the same guy talking to him. And I'll be his coach. I'll help assess and provide him talking points and be right there at the lid. And he said, yep, do it. So I became the forward deployed negotiator, even though I'm not directly talking to him, I'm coaching the guy with him.

So I'm right there though with everything. And we had 25-person team. So it was not just me and Vance. We were leading the team, but they had 25 other negotiators because now we're doing 8-hour shifts and you got every hour, you got to send an update to headquarters. It was like a beast of an operation.

A little bit, yeah.

So yeah, the story on day 3 is like, again, we got 100 FBI personnel plus on scene and director asks us, okay, how many calls were there today? Well, sir, we had 2 calls. It's like 6 PM at night. 2 calls? You know, implying what are you guys doing? What's going on? Why only 2 calls? Oh, well, sir, each call was 4 and a half hours long. Right. So it was like 9 hours of calls. And, you know, it's a classic example of it's tough to lead a crisis from far, right? To be second-guessing your subject matter experts on the ground.

Yeah.

But so there's no more questions about the number of calls after that. But day 6 or day 5 is a pivotal event. We Had an opportunity. He— which is remarkable, think about this— this is the bad guy stuck in a hole. Uh, there's this garage door spring on top of the hatch lid, which he installed these 2 garage door springs to help lift it up. It was so heavy. So imagine like a 200-pound piece of wood or a 200-pound square roof lid. He had the springs on to help him lift it up, and one of the springs had come off in the storm. And he said, well, I want to help you guys lift up that hatch lid to attach a second spring so it's easier for you guys to lift the lid to put medication down. And I heard him say it on the phone. Like, think about this is the bad guy offering to help the police, help law enforcement. And I thought, hey, I ran to the commander since I heard this. I say, boss, he may, he's willing to come underneath and lift the hatch lid up.

Yeah.

Like, that's going to operate it right there.

And see if you can snatch it.

Yeah. What do you, what do you think, boss? Uh, so the boss said, I love it. So we went and, uh, I shared it with HRT and they talked about having a guy right there. And if he could confirm that the child wasn't there, right, then it's, we don't have differences in our lethal force directives, but it was nice to know that at least the boss said, I, I view this as Ethan being in imminent danger. Because we truly don't change our lethal force, but it's just nice to hear a boss say those words anyway. So we go up, do the medicine delivery that day, which is all normal. And then we say, hey, can you help us lift the hatch lid now? And so I'm right there, the hatch lid's opening up, and I can see his white hair because I'm like 3 feet away. And actually, you know, operator's right there, but he's got to wait, right, to confirm that shot. And it lifts up. And then right as the operator's— I can see the finger on the trigger, right? It's coming back. And he caught like a glint of sunlight, like off the barrel or something.

He sees it, drops it. So it's only like half a second. I'm talking like much longer than happened. Like half a second. He goes, you motherfuckers, you just tried to kill me and I was trying to help you. So we lost like all rapport and it really is spiraling downward. He's yelling at us and I should have pulled Tony, was the sheriff's deputy. He did a great job, but it's like not a productive conversation. Right.

Right.

We're just, he's getting more emotional and more pissed. Finally, finally pull him off and said, we like, we're done here. We're, nothing good is coming from you talking to him. And I probably, I'd let him talk probably too long. But anyway, we come back and They did call and say, oh, it was the new guy. The whole— Vance came up with a good excuse. He was just, you know, too close and he'll never come back. Bullshit. He doesn't believe it. So he's like, fingers are twiddling. And then he gives the deadline and he says, by— this is day 6, the next morning. Yeah. I want a female reporter to come inside the bunker. That was his whole request, a female reporter to tell a story, then he'll release Ethan. And he knew there's no other way around it. Like, the reporter has to come in the bunker. then he'll release Ethan. And we're never going to put a female reporter in there.

Yeah.

Even though we had a short guy, he even— HRT operator said he'd put on a wig. It's kind of a funny aside, but we're not going to— we never also put a solo guy. All right. It's always going to be 2 people. Yeah.

I mean, even a female FBI agent, you're not going to put somebody in there.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So it was never seriously considered, but we had to. Right. So it's a 6 by 8 foot space. And this is where I think almost one of those moments that I was kind of meant to be there, lucky to be there, fortunate to be there. Because again, I wanted— now I know, right, my brothers have to go in that hole, but how can we reduce risks? How can negotiators set them up? How can I set up them for success? And I noticed that before, so imagine a 6 by 8 foot room and the ladder was here. So if I can move that Sorry, uh, we would drop toys down every couple days for Ethan to play with, and I noticed he took them to the far corner over here by the bed. And I thought, if we deliver toys to Ethan and then somehow lure Dykes up the ladder, there'd be separation. Exactly. Yeah, that'd be the most we could possibly get in a 6 by 8 foot room, but it's better than any other kind of combination thereof. And I thought, who's the only person that he would speak to? And it clicked. His daughter.

He had 2 estranged daughters. I hadn't spoken to daughters in 20 years. We'd call them up, contacted them on Thursday. One said, I want nothing to do with my dad. But the other said, all right, I'll come help you. So I met, we talked with her and we said, hey, would you talk to your dad for us? And gave her some like scripted lines. Yes. But I didn't tell her she was the lure. So she was going to be the bait. to get him up the ladder. So this is back in 2013, like kind of early Skype days. So hey, let's— I said, let's put her on a computer. I'll lower the computer down the hatch lid just like a foot and have the daughter on there and try to get him up there. So we all— I briefed at least my idea, HRT, they like it. Brief the sheriff, he likes it. We brief the director. Director, similar kind of verbiage, I'll never forget. He says, well, I want everyone in that room, the 7 of us, to verbally concur that you want to go with this plan. He put it back on all of us.

He wanted to make sure 100% concurrence. And everyone said, yes, yes, yes. And then he said, okay, do what you need to do, but before you do it, call me. Think about it from a leadership perspective. He gave us all authority, then took it all back.

Right, right.

So we're all sitting there and I'm I remember Vance and I went and talked to the SAC and said, obviously, boss, you got to call them back because that's not an answer. And, you know, we do believe this is a serious deadline. He's going to kill himself and Ethan. So anyway, they do call back, they get approval. And this is day 7 now. I've got the laptop, which is hardwired to the other laptop, which goes to the van, you know, 50 yards away where the daughter is. And we go up and the breachers, first thing they do, they place their charges on the— there was these 3 eye bolts where the— he also had not only was that £200, but he had steel cables into a winch.

Yes.

So he couldn't open that thing. So he put the 3 charges there and then, excuse me, we deliver the meds just like a routine. That's the other thing too, is keep it the same each and every time. And then we delivered the toys and thank God that second condition is met. The toys. And then I lower the laptop and I'd marked it with like 550 cord. And then we told the daughter, hey, start talking immediately. And then we back out of there. So now we want no more contact with us. We want, right, the daughter. So then we're watching the video screen, the ground force commander, GFC, he knows the triggers. Trigger 1, Ethan is there. Trigger 2, Dykes is up. And he said, Execute, execute, execute. So the charges go, and then the teams run up, uh, breachers open that lid, first guy goes in, uh, and he's just— he jumps in. Imagine like an elevator shaft, but then he's only halfway down the elevator shaft. His like waist is sticking up.

It was like, uh, bicycle locks or something that he Well, we didn't know that yet.

Yeah, we just— I see him jump in and we're all like, what the hell? What the fuck is going on? And now he's getting shot at and he's just like hanging there and it like doesn't compute. Like, why didn't he drop down the bottom? And he sees muzzle flashes, but he doesn't know exactly where Ethan is because now it's been like, whatever, 5 seconds later. Even though it's still 5 seconds, you can move a lot. Or I don't know exactly, maybe 3 seconds, doesn't matter. But he doesn't know exactly. Ethan's location. So the team leader says, you know, pull him out, pull him out. This is the same Witt guy I was in Ramadi with, this awesome leader too. And they pull him out, and then they throw in some more, uh, throw in a couple bangs, and they throw in Ella, another canine, Belgian Malinois. And the canine, she also gets stuck. We're like, what the fuck is going on? And so now, like, this is the first time ever, like, We don't quit anything, right? We are going to overcome every obstacle. But it was similar, or I should say it was like a moment where I just paused, like, again, what are we going to do next?

Right.

We can't get in the hole. Now we've lost speed, surprise, violence of action. We have a little violence of action with the bangs, but what the F? And the team leader sensed that. And this was awesome, that with just some magic words, but they electrified. He said, guys, This is what we do. Get in the hole. And not that it was like a big pause or anything, but it was just those words. And then the breacher reached in. There's— you think you saw the video of it. There's 2 breachers. One guy reaches in, feels there's cables. He has installed a secondary set of cables, crisscrossing cables, which we had looked down that hole dozens of times during the past 6 days, 7 days. We'd seen no other obstructions. He added them just that morning. So one guy has cable cutters, the other guy's a breaching shotgun, and the 2 breachers are being shot at. He's shooting dozens of rounds up the hatch lid and they say clear. And this is one of the bravest things I've ever seen. Again, been shot at, you know, numerous firefights overseas and domestically and seen incredibly brave things from extraordinary men in the military and women in the FBI.

And that same number 1 guy who easily could have like stepped out of the line of march because he's been checked over by the medic and he easily could have stayed out, right? And number 2 guy would have filled right in without a, without any doubt. And he gets back like intentionally in front of the number 2 guy now and then jumps back in the hole knowing that there's an armed adversary actively fighting, waiting to kill me. Like, that's the men I was fortunate enough to serve with, the caliber of individuals in HRT. So he jumps back down that hole, and we in rehearsals practiced, and he knew he was going to encounter either one of two things, right? The grizzled veteran asshole diabolical man, fight to the death, or innocent 5-year-old child. He's not gonna know which, and he just lunges forward, and it's Ethan. Oh my God. Wow. It's a 5-year-old. So he grabs him like this. He turns his body towards the subject, cradles Ethan towards the wall, says, you're going to be okay, Ethan. You're going to be okay. Because he knows every other man is coming right down after him.

There's a whole team, assault team coming in behind him.

Yeah. And 2 and 3 are right behind him. I watch him back up 2. Gets down there. He's got his pistol, fires. It's a Glock, fires 2 rounds, hits center mass, but he charges him. You know what happens in the Glock when you're pulling the trigger and the muzzle is depressed? It goes out of battery.

Yes.

So now he has a nonfunctional weapon, but he knows he's hit the guy twice, but he's still fighting. And so they're tussling, going to the ground. Number 3 guy. And by the way, this is interesting. You'll like this. First guy is a former Marine officer. Second guy down, former Ranger. Third guy down, former Navy SEAL. Let's talk about like the perfect, even though it wasn't planned that way, it's the perfect representation of a joint force of the men on HRT. I think that's an interesting fact. But second guy is now taken to the ground. He's trying to unsling his rifle after they've exchanged blows. The third guy, the SEAL, has his flashlight. He sees jeans on. And he knows all his guys are wearing cry. So then he works his way up to the head. And I'll just say both those guys eliminate the threat. And Ethan comes out and one of the more emotional moments of my life, just seeing him emerge when all of us again have worked so hard and nobody batted an eyelash about the amount of work, but the relief.

Yeah. Yeah.

Was overwhelming. And he was taken to the hospital and he says the doctors, Man, those guys shoot a lot. Because every one of the flashbangs, you know, we had thrown some 9-bangers, he thought we were shooting at him. So that's the quick down and dirty. I tell the whole story in the book too, but it's one of the more incredible examples of teamwork, heroism.

Yeah. I mean, it's like a nightmare scenario.

Yeah.

And they pulled it off amazingly.

Yeah. Over Talk about overcoming adversity and obstacles.

And for you, you took a management job after this?

Yeah, I was so tired of complaining about management. And again, looking at myself in the mirror, I said, hey, if you're not willing to do it yourself, stop bitching. So yeah, I went to Washington Field Office, was a supervisor there at WFO, and then headquarters unit chief, then finished up down in Miami as assistant special agent in charge. So it was a wonderful career. But yeah, interesting to have all 3 perspectives, right? As an operator going through the door, then the perspective of the negotiator, and then later as a leader, like when I was in charge of operations when national security and lives are on the line. So I felt, I don't know, confident.

Mm-hmm.

And having those 3 perspectives, I think made me a better leader and judgment when to use what tool, for example, because as you saw, the blending of those tools where negotiators helped enable the tactical rescue, even though the heroics saved the day, was still enabled initially, right, with the negotiators setting them up.

What was it like, you know, taking that kind of leadership position and now presumably having oversight over a lot of these operations? You're the one they have to call and ask for Permission?

Well, actually, I loved it because I don't know, having been there and done it, like there's, I don't know, a supreme sense of, not of confidence, but just having gone through like these situations on HRT, like the field office had, we had high-risk operations. There were some Americans kidnapped in Haiti and I led the repatriation Wow. I'm on the C-130 with— it was a Coast Guard C-130. So that was really cool bringing back these Americans. But the risk level wasn't the same as HRT, but the responsibility was higher. So I really kind of enjoyed that aspect of it. And having people in Miami was just a wonderful group of professionals and We were counterintelligence and cyber. So I—

Cubans down there.

Yeah, there was a lot of good work in Miami and I truly enjoy that as well.

And then you retired, what, like 3 years ago out of the Bureau?

Yeah, I've been out for 3 and a half and now do some executive leadership development at Cornell University, part of their team. And I also do keynote speaking. So if anyone looking for their company for a corporate retreat, Or event. That's what I do now. I talk about leadership stories. I tell the FBI stories, but then I have some leadership takeaways just so we talk about here. It's kind of the essence of the book. I tell those stories and a little bit leadership takeaways.

Where can people find you if they did want to have you come speak at their event?

So I'm on LinkedIn and my company name actually is Inner Perimeter, which you'll like, innerperimeter.com. The most trusted leaders are closest to the crisis. And the book's on Amazon, so they can connect me either through the LinkedIn, innerperimeter.com, or hit me up on LinkedIn.

Tell us a little bit about the book itself. Like, how did this come about? What was sort of your motivation for writing it?

I had several colleagues in the FBI say, Kyle, you really should write this. And Chris Whitcomb, who you've had on, he actually encouraged me. I've talked to him several times and he pushed me as well for the similar reason we talked about before. to share so the American people like know about these incredible people that did so much on their behalf. Because you think of the kind of Herculean efforts that we went to save one child, and I think people need to know about that. So that was really the impetus. I want to encourage others to serve their community and their country and, you know, share these stories. And hopefully we'll do that.

And the book is called Shaping Chaos. Where can people find it?

It's on Amazon, any place books are sold. Actually comes out November 3rd. We're in the important critical presale phase. So, I'd love it if— and it's a discount if you preorder on Amazon. But yeah, there's some riveting stories in there, again, with those takeaways. And really, I wanted to highlight some extraordinary people. So, hopefully it reflects that as well that I was fortunate enough to serve with.

Absolutely. Anything else that we didn't cover that you'd really like to talk about?

Oh, we've covered a lot. I feel like I've talked like way too much.

Oh, it's great.

But no, thanks so much for your service as well and for telling these stories. I think it's important for veterans and fellow people because I think it's cathartic.

I don't know about you. Yeah, I think it helps folks process sort of their own experiences. And also, as you mentioned, I mean, For people to hear some of these stories and know that these things exist, maybe expands their— for a young person, expands their mind a little bit of what's possible and what they might be able to do.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. Hope to inspire others. And I respond like I still— all right. People hit me up on LinkedIn who are interested in the Bureau. I'll talk to them and help them out because I want to encourage service to our country because we, as you know, live in the greatest country on earth and we got to continually find people willing to raise their hand to serve this country.

Yeah. We recently had, uh, Steve Lazarus on, FBI, uh, EOD guy.

Mm-hmm.

And we had, um, oh, what was that gentleman's name? The, uh, counterintelligence dude that was, uh, involved in the Robert Hanssen arrest. I can't remember the— I'm sorry, it's dropped. It's— we're having, uh, another one of the, uh, bomb guys. Uh, Barry.

Yeah. Barry Black.

Yeah.

He's gonna, he's gonna be on here. So yeah, no, it's always fun talking to FBI guys.

Well, thanks very much. Rangers lead the way.

Yeah. Thank you. So please go check out Kyle's book, Shaping Chaos. It's available for preorder now and comes out November 3rd. So thank you everyone who joined us. And thanks again, Kyle, for making the trip in.

Appreciate the time.

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