The FBI raided a 75-year-old man's home in Provo, Utah, on January 6th. The raid was supposed to be a routine SWAT raid, but turned into one of the most controversial raids in the agency s history.
00:01:41.900He objected to being part of the January 6th raids.
00:01:45.800He is the author of True Blue, and I wanted to get him on because he is a guy who was in a SWAT team, and I want to know what happened in Provo, Utah the other day.
00:01:59.020We had a guy who was really not able to get around.
00:02:08.220Now, I don't agree with what he did and what he said.
00:02:13.240I think the FBI should have investigated him, but not break his door down at 6 o'clock in the morning and come in with a tank through his front bay window.
00:02:59.660Do they do any investigation about who this person is, or are they just going to the house?
00:03:07.400Well, I think that's a huge problem with this particular case, because those original threats were made about five months ago, and the agents went to his house and assessed it, and either deemed that he was not an imminent threat or they were having a hard time pushing charges forward.
00:03:22.780But because he made these recent threats against the president, they used those earlier threats as additional leverage in the write-up of the affidavit for his arrest to make him seem like a greater threat and enhance the ability and enhance the tools and likelihood that SWAT would be a likely means to bring him into custody.
00:03:41.560And there's also the fact that the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office is brand new, and that's somebody who basically has their rank on their sleeve with their Velcro, and they're not going to be pushing back against the predominant line of thinking that if there's a threat of violence against the sitting president, that we need to use the special weapons and tactics team to bring them into custody.
00:04:06.380So is this, was this attack on this man's home, was this to send a message? Was it just incompetence, laziness? What happened?
00:04:20.380I think that it is a result of the fact that the FBI is now viewing their agents as case managers, as opposed to the agents who investigate the cases.
00:04:34.460And there's this mentality that permeates. And actually, in the software where you have your case files housed, you're called a case manager.
00:04:40.620And when you're the case manager, you're sort of moving chess pieces around the board.
00:04:43.680So if you need financial analysis done, you send the records over to the forensic accountant.
00:04:48.280And if you need evidence to be analyzed, you send it over to the lab.
00:04:51.640And eventually, when it comes time to arrest the subject, you send the SWAT team, because those are the arrest guys that do that.
00:04:57.660And when SWAT gets involved, they have a matrix. It's overly broad.
00:05:02.520Just the threat of violence or the suspicion that there might be a firearm is enough to send SWAT, and that's regardless of whether or not the person is prohibited from owning a firearm.
00:05:11.340And then SWAT is going to use its protocols. It's going to come in at 6 o'clock in the morning.
00:05:16.320That's the earliest typically that you're allowed to do that, because it's speed, surprise, and violence of action.
00:05:20.920You're hoping to overwhelm the person so that there's not going to be a threat.
00:05:24.120But in this case, they had had a history with this gentleman, and they obviously knew that he wasn't an imminent threat or maybe not even physically capable of bringing these threats to fruition.
00:05:35.440And he wasn't necessarily very ambulatory. So I think there was far better options if they had actually taken a step back and had rushed.
00:05:44.260But I think when there's this threat here, there's always this pressure that we have to use the tool at our disposal, because it breezes well up the chain of command.
00:05:52.040You don't want to be the leader that said, well, I sent two agents to his house instead of a SWAT team when he threatened to kill the president.
00:05:57.600So what is the purpose of a flash bomb?
00:06:05.580A flashbang is a diversionary device. It doesn't shoot out any sort of projectiles.
00:06:13.360If you hold it in your hand, you might have a chance of being burned.
00:06:16.960But it essentially gives the operators about one and a half seconds where it would temporarily make the person blinded, would impair their hearing for some time afterwards.
00:06:27.780And it allows you to get multiple people into a room before they're able to respond and then maybe fire on you.
00:06:33.820Correct. So you're not using it when you're in the room with the person and you're already positioned shouting at each other, right?
00:06:41.820No, I mean, obviously, if you're giving verbal commands and you've thrown a flashbang, they might not actually be able to hear you.
00:06:48.920Right. Okay. So there was a flashbang right before he was shot.
00:06:54.380But the flashbang was not in the house.
00:08:07.820Yeah, and there's a possibility that that happened, that they were anticipating needing a flashbang, and then for whatever reason, he was open the door and was then having a conversation engaging them verbally, and they needed to get that flashbang so that it wasn't going to go off in the operator's hand or anything like that.
00:08:24.840They could have been having a verbal engagement with him through a door and then eventually decided that they were going to reach it in order to do that, distract him, throw the flashbang in another area, then reach and enter, and hopefully that would give them enough time to get to him before he could respond.
00:08:42.280Does the FBI, do they wear cameras on their vests?
00:08:48.500There's a plan in place to implement body cameras, and from my understanding, there's been training done on that.
00:08:54.840But it's not been implemented, and I'm concerned that if the decision is made to actually wear them, that the FBI will say, we don't want to reveal our tactics, so we're not going to have them rolling when we do our SWAT takedowns, but we'll use them for after effect to make sure that we're not mistreating anybody after all the smoke has cleared.
00:09:14.720So I don't know what extent they're planning on making those recordings available, especially when it comes to SWAT, because that's rarely necessary in the prosecution of an individual that you've already built the case against them, but at that point, it's not really evidentiary.
00:09:29.700Yeah, I'm not looking to build a case against, you know, the perpetrator here, and I'm not looking to build a case against the FBI.
00:09:43.360It's the same reason that, you know, people who didn't trust the police, and, you know, at times would have good reason not to trust the police,
00:09:50.760because they demanded that we have cameras on so we could make sure the police were doing their job and not overstepping.
00:09:58.860If the FBI is going to get involved in all of these local things and their response is to always send in a SWAT team,
00:10:10.480I think it's important that they have cameras on them, because I don't trust them, and I don't think the American people trust them.
00:10:18.160I agree with you on that 100%, and I think there needs to be an evaluation of the SWAT matrix.
00:10:25.100It needs to be narrowed for special circumstances.
00:10:27.500They're especially risky and dangerous, and there just needs to be more critical thinking when it comes time to bringing somebody into custody
00:10:33.300using the least amount of force necessary should be what the premier law enforcement agency focuses on,
00:10:38.880which is one of the reasons I objected to what we were doing on January 6th.
00:10:42.440We were sending a SWAT team to arrest an individual who had pledged to cooperate with us,
00:10:46.780and I thought that that presented an unnecessary risk to his safety and to our own.
00:10:50.920You know, there is something to be said for local police.
00:10:56.000The reason why local police can be much more effective is because they know the people of the community.
00:11:02.160Now, maybe none of them knew this person on the local police, but I don't think they were even asked.
00:11:08.400You know, when you used to have Officer O'Malley, and he was walking the beat, he knew everybody because he lived on that block.
00:11:19.400The local police should be involved in things like this as much as possible to where they're saying,
00:11:25.540wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, Bob, don't you know his neighbor?
00:11:28.880Don't you know? Because that person can knock on the door, and it's not an FBI SWAT team.
00:11:35.840The federal government doesn't seem to care about anything other than their power, and it's got to stop.
00:16:53.700Well, it was basically when I think we spoke last when you came, when you kindly came on my show and you said, you know, I was walking into the studio today and I don't know why I was happy, but I was just filled with happiness.
00:17:05.660And then I realized I was about to speak to Gad Saad and that made me happy.
00:17:10.060I said, what a perfect quote for a happiness book.
00:17:31.280And when you when you look at this book and I haven't read it yet, but you talk about several things that I want you just to highlight here on how to live the life you want, not necessarily the life expected of you.
00:17:46.360And my father said to me when I was young, there are two words that are so important, especially because the third word is the empowering word.
00:19:55.140So this is in the chapter on regret where I say that for many things, it's never too late to change course.
00:20:02.340So there was a gentleman who escaped around the start of when the Nazis were coming in, moved to Montreal, became a businessman.
00:20:10.260But I decided that, you know, he just couldn't go to school, to university because, you know, life circumstances would not allow him to do that.
00:20:17.640In his 60s, when he retired, he said, you know what?
00:21:06.320So you write in the book that your career needs to have a higher purpose than a paycheck, which I absolutely believe.
00:21:13.760The thing that gets me through every day is I know my life and my job have a purpose that is much bigger than success or fame or money or anything else.
00:22:06.460In other words, there are many, many ways by which I can immerse myself in the creative process.
00:22:13.480And that, by definition, is more likely to, you know, grant you purpose and meaning.
00:22:18.740So, you know, we need insurance adjusters.
00:22:21.900And I respect all honest jobs, but I'm willing to bet that the insurance adjuster doesn't wake up in the morning and say, thank God I'm an insurance adjuster.
00:22:29.840He has to find his purpose and meaning elsewhere.
00:22:31.800But if you can find it in your job by being creative, boy, you won the lottery.
00:22:36.580Yeah, I will tell you, though, that all thought is creative.
00:22:42.440It's just whether you recognize it or not.
00:22:44.300And I was just talking to somebody who was telling me a story I'm trying to remember of a friend of his who he went over.
00:22:51.040I think he went over to his house and he was sitting there at the kitchen table and he was reading algebra books and he's an accountant or a CPA.
00:23:00.320And he's like, huh, dig in the algebra book, huh?
00:23:05.000And he's like, oh, yeah, no, I really I mean, numbers are so fascinating to me.
00:23:09.360I just I just like to read and reread this stuff.
00:24:52.500And then there's the birds of a feather flock together adage.
00:24:56.140And it turns out, Glenn, for long-term success of a marriage or relationship, it's overwhelmingly the case that birds of a feather flock together, meaning you have to choose a partner with whom you share, you know, life goals, values, belief systems.
00:25:12.960So, for example, if you, Glenn, you're a religious person and, you know, you center God and, you know, at the center of your life, then probably marrying someone who's a nonbeliever is going to put a lot of scissors in your marriage.
00:25:26.520So look for someone with whom you share these fundamental beliefs, and that increases your chances of being successful in your marriage greatly.
00:25:34.060What is really interesting to me is I married a woman and intentionally and she intentionally married me for, well, I mean, there was a gun involved, but she married me for the same reasons we had.
00:25:50.680And this was her insistence, and I understood it, you know, after she explained it to me, that if we don't have the basic fundamentals in lockstep, we'll never make it.
00:26:04.240But we are both birds of a feather in the basic core.
00:26:09.320We never have arguments on any of the core values unless, you know, I come home and I'm like, what?
00:26:16.260Well, no, I'm telling that fits, you know, then she's like, no, it doesn't.
00:26:19.880Anyway, we don't have real wrestles on that.
00:26:45.600She is the opposite of me on those things.
00:26:48.240And I I think that both of those things can be true at the same time.
00:26:54.660You're absolutely right that there are some contexts where the complementarity of the two people makes a better union.
00:27:02.380But as you said at the start of your response, when it when I'm talking about birds of a feather, I'm specifically talking about those fundamental non-negotiables.
00:27:11.660If you have differences of opinion on those, then it just increases the likelihood of you failing in your marriage, because those are the fundamental mindsets that shape your life.
00:27:22.420So I agree with you. Opposites attract can apply, but not for sort of the deontological, non-negotiable elements.
00:27:32.100His book is The Sad Truth About Happiness.
00:27:34.680He is an evolutionary behavioral scientist who has put his work to and his knowledge toward good instead of evil.
00:27:44.860And Gad, I want to talk to you a little bit about Canada because it is changing so rapidly.
00:27:50.480And I fear for Canada as much as I do for the United States.
00:27:58.120I've always found Canadians to be just much more less flighty.
00:28:03.660You know, we're we're much more like, let's get it.
00:28:06.860And Canada is like, OK, all right, slow down a bit.
00:28:09.400But what's happening now, especially in the field of death, is terrifying, because I think people are being trained now to look at suicide as a reasonable option for anything, any kind of discomfort.
00:28:34.100I'm not too familiar with some of the latest laws that have been passed.
00:28:37.800But I agree with you that we might have a slightly more tolerant view of euthanasia than I would like it to be.
00:28:47.520But I can tell you that Canada in general and Quebec in particular are just off the charts when it comes to the woke meter.
00:28:56.040I recently it causes me great pain to talk about this.
00:29:00.480But I recently got into a huge trouble in Quebec because I made a innocent, you know, fun loving joke about the Quebec accent on the Joe Rogan show.
00:29:11.800And that ended up being covered, you know, for probably a week by every single media outlet in Quebec.
00:29:18.160I mean, I could I could I could criticize Islam and receive less hate than having criticized the Quebec accent in a fun way.
00:29:25.840So we've got a lot of work to do up there to try to preserve some of these foundational values that we hold so dearly.
00:29:32.700What is happening with Jordan Peterson?
00:29:49.640I mean, what what protects Jordan, of course, is that he he is, in a sense, too big to be intimidated.
00:29:55.260And so he I don't know what the final result is of that thing.
00:29:59.660But again, it speaks to such a dreadful reality where, as you said, you need to be sent to Gulag 13 for reeducation for the criminally insane.
00:30:10.660Can we be we were just talking about this in the, you know, the Matrix, the first Matrix, you know, was they said in the first movie was to give everybody make everybody happy and everybody had a perfect life and humans rejected it.
00:30:24.320Are we capable of truly being happy in a good state?
00:30:31.040I mean, America has had some really bad things, but the West, generally speaking, has been good for mankind and we have a lifestyle bigger and better and easier than anyone's ever had it.
00:30:45.000But with the removal of some of that conflict, it seems like we just go to hell in the handbasket and start finding things to bitch and whine about.
00:30:54.320Right. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons why, you know, the difficulties that I went through in the Lebanese Civil War, paradoxically, actually actually make me a happier person.
00:31:04.300Because having experienced the horrors of what societies can typically dish out, then I can always contextualize whatever is causing me to whine about some issue in the day.
00:31:16.480I can sort of stop myself and say, wait a minute, stop whining.
00:31:20.160You escaped miraculously the Lebanese Civil War.
00:31:23.800And that quickly kind of jolts me back into reality, whereas I think the West takes for granted all of these foundational values.
00:31:30.440And therefore, they go into hysteria because you make fun of someone's accent or you misgender someone at Wellesley.