Valuetainment - Episode 377： Undercover FBI Agent Exposes Sinaloa Cartel & La Cosa Nostra

00:00:00.280 30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Ignition sequence start.

00:00:07.000 Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, touch the stars up above.

00:00:11.120 Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.

00:00:17.320 I'm Patrick Medevi, your host of AITM, and today I sit down with a 30-year FBI undercover agent

00:00:22.260 and he shares and exposes what it was like to be an undercover agent for the Sinaloa cartel,

00:00:26.800 La Cosa Nostra, and the Russian mob. 0.96

00:00:28.580 Michael, thank you for flying out and being a guest with us.

00:00:30.980 Thank you for having me, Patrick.

00:00:31.960 Yes, and it's exciting because you just retired two years ago, so a lot of your stories are going to be a good time.

00:00:35.960 We're going to have some stories that are recent, some that are older. This is a good mixture.

00:00:39.680 It is.

00:00:40.340 So when did you wake up and say, I'm going to go be an FBI agent? What was that like?

00:00:44.600 I never did. So the way that came around was I grew up in a police family.

00:00:51.020 My father, my grandfather were police officers. My son is now a police officer.

00:00:55.680 I didn't think I had a choice. That was the family business. We were bluebloods before there was a bluebloods. 0.89

00:01:01.680 So I knew I was going into police work, but I expected to be a police officer, and that's what I became right out of college.

00:01:08.640 I became a police officer.

00:01:09.920 And while I was a police officer, we were responding to bank robberies in which the FBI also had jurisdiction.

00:01:18.900 And one day, one of the FBI agents asked me if I had considered joining the FBI, and it literally was the first time it crossed my mind.

00:01:25.400 And I told him, not really. I was very happy being a police officer.

00:01:30.180 And the next time I saw him, he handed me a sheet with the application, and he also slipped a second piece in, which had the salary, which was more than twice what I was making as a police officer.

00:01:40.640 And I had just had a baby. We were just starting our family, so I figured I'd give it a shot, never expecting to be hired.

00:01:46.780 So there was no lifelong ambition to become an agent. It just kind of happened, and I'm glad it did.

00:01:53.560 What did your dad think? Did you not tell him right off the bat or family that I'm going? Was it a secrecy thing for you?

00:01:59.980 No, my father had passed early. He was a police officer for almost 30 years. He died six months after retirement.

00:02:08.320 You were 19, right? Were you 19 when he passed?

00:02:11.920 I was 19 years old when he passed.

00:02:13.040 You were 19 years old. That's right. You were 19.

00:02:14.820 So when you were 19 when he passed, he was a retired cop. You become an FBI agent later on in life.

00:02:21.400 Family, do they know yet that you're an FBI agent?

00:02:24.260 My family knew I was an FBI agent, obviously, both my own family and then my extended family.

00:02:30.880 But they didn't know I worked undercover. I didn't think that was a good idea.

00:02:36.480 I tell the story that when I was a cop, I came home from the midnight shift.

00:02:40.720 We had just been married. I was from a police family, so I understood police work.

00:02:44.940 My wife wasn't. So I got jumped in a bar and came home with two black eyes and a separated shoulder.

00:02:52.300 And my wife yelled at me for apparently getting my butt kicked at work, but it really frightened her. 1.00

00:02:59.300 And we made a deal very early in our marriage that what I did at work stayed at work.

00:03:04.080 So once I transitioned into undercover work, I didn't want to bother my wife and my kids about what I did.

00:03:10.420 So they knew I was an FBI agent, but not what I did at work.

00:03:13.560 So were you gone regularly, kind of like how Piston was gone for a long time?

00:03:17.500 Was that also with you when you were gone?

00:03:19.300 I was gone, especially when my kids were young.

00:03:21.780 And again, you talk about the book that I wrote.

00:03:26.220 I wrote the book not for general consumption.

00:03:29.080 I wrote it to thank my wife and explain to my children what I had been doing.

00:03:32.940 That was literally your motive.

00:03:34.260 That was the motive.

00:03:35.000 I never intended this to be published or being out in the open.

00:03:38.300 I wanted to thank my wife.

00:03:39.680 She raised and took care of our family.

00:03:41.560 I have three productive, healthy, wonderful children.

00:03:44.940 It's all a result of my wife taking care of them when I was out playing cops and robbers.

00:03:49.120 And my kids, they didn't understand.

00:03:52.140 When they're little, they don't know you're an FBI agent.

00:03:54.720 They just know you're doing weird things.

00:03:56.480 I tell the story that my son was homesick from school.

00:03:59.900 He was little, seven or eight years old.

00:04:02.120 I was working the night.

00:04:03.380 I came home, went to bed.

00:04:05.020 He didn't know I was home.

00:04:06.280 I didn't know he was home.

00:04:07.720 The doorbell rang.

00:04:08.860 I peeked out the window, and I went downstairs, and my son's at the top of the stairs.

00:04:13.800 I don't know he's there.

00:04:15.440 And I answered the door with a gun behind my back.

00:04:17.800 And my son, who was seven or eight at the time, never told us.

00:04:21.220 He told that story years later at Christmastime.

00:04:23.900 Wow.

00:04:24.540 And I wanted to explain to them, because they'd see me in the basement with a recorder.

00:04:29.700 Just odd things that kids don't normally see their parents doing or they don't understand.

00:04:34.820 And then I'd leave for months, weeks.

00:04:37.740 There was one case I was gone two and a half years.

00:04:40.560 Permanently.

00:04:41.060 You've gone two and a half years.

00:04:42.140 They don't see you at all.

00:04:43.620 Bouncing back and forth about once every two months or so.

00:04:46.900 During that time, my kid, he was in the fifth grade.

00:04:49.500 He got in a fight in school because another kid teased him.

00:04:52.040 His parents were divorced.

00:04:53.360 His father was gone.

00:04:54.340 So he decided to handle it on the playground.

00:04:57.200 It's just a crazy lifestyle.

00:04:58.620 So I wanted my wife and my kids to understand, because they made the same sacrifices that I was making.

00:05:04.920 What was their reaction when they read the book?

00:05:07.420 I heard they read in less than a week or less than a day, some story like that.

00:05:10.760 What was their reaction?

00:05:11.480 My question was, when I first wrote it for them, I didn't realize when you write a book, you don't have to write the whole book.

00:05:18.020 So I wrote 357 pages, and I gave it to my children and my wife at a Christmas.

00:05:23.160 I put it under the tree one year.

00:05:25.280 I think it was 2014 or 2015.

00:05:27.760 My wife and my daughter went upstairs that day and came down the following day, having read the whole story and not knowing a lot of it.

00:05:38.260 So they were first exposed to it.

00:05:41.100 And then it explained a lot.

00:05:42.400 My kids all say to me, now I get it.

00:05:45.120 Now I got it.

00:05:46.340 Were they crying?

00:05:47.320 Were they wowed?

00:05:48.200 Were they flabbergasted?

00:05:48.760 It was actually emotional because, and again, for my wife, she didn't know the situations that I was involved in, which I didn't want her to know.

00:05:59.420 She didn't join the FBI.

00:06:00.960 She wasn't responsible for what I did.

00:06:03.500 But, you know, to get up in the middle of the night and then leave and not come home for four or five days, just the family life of an undercover agent is difficult.

00:06:14.980 And again, at the end of my career, I always had an interest in writing.

00:06:18.080 I wanted to try to write something.

00:06:19.680 I wanted to do that all my life.

00:06:21.980 And so that's how I figured I would try it, by explaining to them, the people most important to me, what I was doing.

00:06:31.220 Would you recommend a life to other people or no?

00:06:33.620 Yes.

00:06:34.100 You would?

00:06:34.760 I would.

00:06:35.140 As an FBI agent?

00:06:36.280 As an FBI agent.

00:06:37.240 I would because, number one, it's very fulfilling.

00:06:41.840 People say to me, well, you know, you wrote a book and a movie, blah, blah, blah.

00:06:45.040 But 30 years of FBI work was the ultimate.

00:06:48.460 That's all I want to remember.

00:06:50.500 That was the highlight of my life.

00:06:53.160 And the rush you get, the adrenaline rush, the satisfaction of basically, because you've got to remember, you're an FBI agent.

00:07:00.140 You're convincing real bad guys that you're as bad as worse than they are.

00:07:03.900 That's not easy.

00:07:04.820 So it's a challenge.

00:07:05.900 I always like to have challenges in front of me.

00:07:08.580 So I was terrible when I first started undercover work.

00:07:11.420 There was no training.

00:07:12.820 I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to do it.

00:07:15.960 And it's a skill that you can improve upon if you work hard at it.

00:07:19.480 And I'd like to think that I worked hard at it, but I always wanted the next one.

00:07:23.160 And that's why retiring was so hard.

00:07:25.460 There wasn't a next one.

00:07:27.540 Retiring was hard.

00:07:28.760 Very hard.

00:07:29.160 Wow.

00:07:29.820 Of course.

00:07:30.300 I mean, if you're doing it 30-plus years, just that side of it yourself, what makes a good FBI undercover agent?

00:07:36.320 In my opinion, there's a couple of things that make some agents perform better than others.

00:07:42.820 One is you have to be humble.

00:07:46.480 You have to be confident without being cocky.

00:07:49.780 You have to be a good listener.

00:07:51.780 People miss that.

00:07:53.300 When a bad guy's talking to you, young undercover agents start thinking of their next answer,

00:07:57.860 and they don't listen.

00:08:00.000 And if you don't listen carefully to what they're saying, they're the ones who are providing the evidence, not you.

00:08:06.120 The more you're talking, the less evidence they're giving you.

00:08:09.840 So I trained new undercover agents, and I actually have a list of good traits and bad traits.

00:08:15.640 And the good traits are basically common sense, good judgment, not getting too high, getting too low.

00:08:22.140 And you have to be comfortable.

00:08:23.520 You have to be comfortable in the environment.

00:08:25.080 A lot of people don't want to go into undercover work because they're fearful of not being able to adapt to the group setting that they're in.

00:08:37.180 I felt differently.

00:08:38.740 You know, if you continue to work at this skill, you can infiltrate literally almost any group in the world.

00:08:45.920 Got it.

00:08:46.240 How different is the FBI from your experience versus a CIA agent, or is it pretty close on who would do well?

00:08:52.760 Again, I don't know enough about the CIA.

00:08:56.320 I just know that state, federal, when you meet state, federal, and local law enforcement officers who also work undercover,

00:09:03.940 I can kind of pick them out of a crowd, there's a certain, it's hard to describe, but there's a certain mindset, there's a certain skill set that you kind of get used to when you see people.

00:09:19.800 You know, a lot of times when you're saying this, is there a part of it that's also acting as well?

00:09:23.680 I don't like to use the word acting.

00:09:26.460 As I've said, you don't get take two in undercover work.

00:09:32.080 If you make a mistake, literally, you can lose your life and you can jeopardize an investigation.

00:09:38.940 Was there ever a time where that happened to you or no?

00:09:40.960 Absolutely.

00:09:42.180 What situation was it?

00:09:43.500 We were investigating a suspected serial killer that we had had contact with in an undercover capacity, and one of the agents ass-dialed a phone, and the bad guy heard us talking about our approach to him.

00:10:02.200 Oh, my God.

00:10:02.860 So we jeopardized, and again, you know, you do that and you call your friend and people laugh about it, or we called a serial killer.

00:10:11.200 And again, not proud of that.

00:10:14.000 It happens.

00:10:14.780 But that's how important what we're doing is.

00:10:18.200 So you make one mistake like that.

00:10:19.920 We had already convinced him that we were bad guys, but then we made a mistake and the case was closed, obviously.

00:10:25.780 Immediately.

00:10:25.860 He actually called the FBI and said, don't bother coming back.

00:10:30.120 He called the FBI and said, don't bother coming back.

00:10:33.100 Coming back, yeah.

00:10:34.060 And then what happened to him later on?

00:10:36.520 He's still on the street.

00:10:37.720 He's still on the street.

00:10:38.960 And what year was this?

00:10:40.320 Was it 20 years ago?

00:10:41.540 No, this was probably maybe 10 years ago.

00:10:45.140 10 years ago and he's still on the streets.

00:10:46.740 Mm-hmm.

00:10:47.320 He's behind you in the grocery store.

00:10:49.700 Wow.

00:10:50.580 Very impressive.

00:10:52.040 No, it's not impressive because that's a mistake that we made.

00:10:55.200 What I'm saying with him is the fact that he's still in the streets is impressive for him to still not be caught.

00:10:59.820 That's what I'm saying by being very impressive on his end.

00:11:02.560 So, okay, so let's go through some of the stories.

00:11:04.840 Let's go through some of the stories.

00:11:06.560 Joe Pistone, are you guys friends or you just know of each other?

00:11:09.460 Joe and I are, I would call us acquaintances.

00:11:12.120 Okay.

00:11:12.280 Joe was one generation before me.

00:11:14.660 So I believe Joe retired a year before I joined.

00:11:19.300 So there was no overlap in our careers.

00:11:23.280 He was just getting out as I was coming in.

00:11:25.260 But everybody in the undercover community obviously know Joe's work in New York and he's been kind enough to help me along in my career.

00:11:35.740 But, again, we don't socialize.

00:11:37.200 We don't spend time with one another.

00:11:39.240 But any good undercover agent will always try to help another undercover agent.

00:11:44.140 I don't care what kind of badge you wear.

00:11:46.420 If you have the cajons to go out on the street and do this, I'll help you.

00:11:51.700 Oh, it doesn't matter what it is.

00:11:52.840 You guys work together and you understand each other.

00:11:54.980 Absolutely.

00:11:55.480 That's great to know.

00:11:56.380 Have you ever been in the same room with Joe?

00:11:58.780 Yes.

00:11:59.040 I told Joe at the end of the interview, I don't know if you remember that, I said, Joe, I feel like you still feel like you're with the mob.

00:12:08.000 And he says, no.

00:12:08.600 I said, you talk like a mobster.

00:12:10.260 You won't take those glasses off. 0.99

00:12:12.240 You dress like a mobster.

00:12:14.300 What do you think when you see Joe?

00:12:16.120 Are you seeing somebody that was so deep into their life for six years that some of it is stuck?

00:12:20.100 No, and that's a good question because when I watched that interview, Joe's answer was the exact answer I'd get you.

00:12:25.660 He never once confused his identity.

00:12:28.520 He's an FBI agent, as I was an FBI agent.

00:12:31.840 Our job is to collect intelligence and evidence.

00:12:35.720 We may look, dress, talk, act, and manipulate them like they do, but we're not one of them.

00:12:44.540 And people ask me all the time, don't you feel bad when you get next to a guy and he goes to jail?

00:12:49.180 And no, I don't because he put himself in jail.

00:12:51.820 At all?

00:12:52.660 No.

00:12:53.080 Zero?

00:12:53.820 Zero.

00:12:55.480 Other people may feel differently.

00:12:57.060 Yeah.

00:12:57.220 I'm just telling you, my experience, I like these guys.

00:13:02.420 I mean, the mob guys that I hung out with were the funniest guys in the world, but they kill each other.

00:13:08.840 They kill each other regularly.

00:13:10.700 If they kill each other, that's a crime.

00:13:12.620 And they do other things that, you know, they want the lifestyle that comes from easy living, and then they don't want to pay the penalties when they're caught.

00:13:22.560 So that's their decision.

00:13:24.120 I never forced anybody into committing a crime.

00:13:26.780 That's what they chose to do.

00:13:27.860 Are you friends with anybody from that life that turned their lives around, that got a hold of you, and you guys now have a relationship, or not at all?

00:13:34.740 Well, one of my best friends, he just passed away a couple years ago.

00:13:37.900 So it's one of the cases I worked in the Merlino, Philadelphia crime family.

00:13:43.660 There was an informant named Ron Prevetti.

00:13:46.860 He's publicly been acknowledged, et cetera.

00:13:50.120 He skilled me, not an FBI agent, informant, a bad guy turned informant, taught me the ways of the mob.

00:13:57.820 And I spent years working with him and learning from him, and I had a super relationship with him up until his death a couple years ago.

00:14:08.920 So he's the lefty to you.

00:14:11.440 He's the guy that was kind of given, except he wasn't an informant.

00:14:14.520 Lefty wasn't an informant, but he was.

00:14:16.300 Prevetti was an informant, but he had been in the military.

00:14:19.940 He had been a Philadelphia police officer, and then he switched sides, and he became a captain in the Merlino family.

00:14:28.500 And then he decided to get out before we got him, and he came on board with us, and he taught me literally almost everything about the mob.

00:14:37.880 Some of the things. What are some of the things he taught you about the mob?

00:14:40.180 Well, there's a perfect example.

00:14:41.660 I showed up one time. He was talking about the way I dress.

00:14:44.400 I showed up one time, and I had on a very nice suit, and he looked at me, and he said,

00:14:49.120 You're an FBI agent.

00:14:50.340 I said, What are you talking about?

00:14:51.300 I said, It's a $1,500 suit.

00:14:53.300 He said, Yeah, but you got on $8 socks.

00:14:55.220 You got JCPenney socks on, so you're cheap, so you're an agent.

00:14:59.260 You're not a mobster.

00:15:00.320 So who would think what type of socks you wore?

00:15:02.540 That's a good example of what he taught me.

00:15:05.760 It's little things like that that made me get better at what I did, listening to him.

00:15:11.580 People think of informants, and I know there's different opinions of that, but they've lived that life.

00:15:16.720 They know that life.

00:15:17.580 Why wouldn't we take that help?

00:15:19.780 Very interesting that he's paying attention to everything people are wearing.

00:15:22.740 $8 JCPenney socks with $1,500 suits.

00:15:26.120 Some of the cases you were undercover in.

00:15:27.660 One of the cases that seems that's pretty interesting to me is the largest heroin you guys sees.

00:15:34.080 I think it was $400 million, if I'm right with the numbers, if not the second largest at the time.

00:15:39.140 One article says first, biggest.

00:15:40.980 Another one says second, so it's obviously one of the biggest one ever.

00:15:44.100 How was that, going through that process of experiencing that?

00:15:47.380 Okay, in that case, the first heroin case you're talking about was in Philadelphia, and I was the case agent.

00:15:53.520 I was not the undercover agent, because these guys were in Karachi, Pakistan,

00:15:58.600 and we convinced them to send 50 kilos of heroin into the U.S., and we seized it.

00:16:05.240 So I would help develop the storyline.

00:16:07.340 They thought they were talking to another inmate, somebody in the prison system that there was a relationship with.

00:16:12.720 So that case, when we seized the 50 kilograms of heroin in 1992, that was valued at $180 million,

00:16:23.080 and we didn't pay a dime for that heroin.

00:16:24.700 It was all fronted to us, given to us in advance, believing that we would sell it and repay them, which we obviously didn't.

00:16:32.260 And then that led to the second heroin case after the debacle with the heroin gone missing.

00:16:38.520 There's a second heroin case where we were able to use the original defendant as an informant to make a second seizure,

00:16:47.540 which was another $200 million.

00:16:49.060 So combined, they have a total of $400 million between the two of them.

00:16:52.160 God, so this was a time when you were an agent for seven years, and they accused you of taking $180 million.

00:16:58.380 After the first seizure, that 50 kilograms, I was a golden boy.

00:17:04.640 In the FBI, that means you can do no wrong.

00:17:06.500 So I was a golden boy, and a year and a half later, the FBI turned around and accused me of stealing it out of the evidence locker.

00:17:13.520 When they did, what happened to you?

00:17:14.680 Were you still working day to day or now?

00:17:17.020 I was working at the time, and I was told that I couldn't discuss it with anyone, including my family,

00:17:22.400 that I was to keep my mouth shut while the investigation took place.

00:17:25.540 So my own agency thought I was guilty of a horrendous crime.

00:17:30.700 How long did that investigation last?

00:17:32.860 About four months.

00:17:33.700 Four months.

00:17:35.060 And then after four months, do you, because I know in that world, it's, you know, you get a scar,

00:17:40.520 the golden boy is gone, and then everybody's kind of like, what if, you know, what if he is doing something like that?

00:17:44.740 I tell people all the time, I went from golden boy to public enemy number one.

00:17:49.120 My reputation, my integrity was destroyed, falsely.

00:17:52.720 I know who supported me and who didn't.

00:17:56.540 The people who didn't, to this day, I won't speak to them.

00:17:59.680 I was on the SWAT team and on a drug squad at the time, and the agents on the drug squad and the SWAT team,

00:18:06.560 who I worked with on a daily basis, supported me 100% while the rest of the office waited for the, see which way the wind was blowing.

00:18:13.660 It was horrific.

00:18:15.540 The FBI, you don't make a lot of money.

00:18:18.180 Everything is your reputation and your integrity, and to have that falsely tarnished and never be given a,

00:18:24.720 I was later given an explanation, a apology by Director Free.

00:18:28.480 Nobody who accused me in the first place ever apologized.

00:18:32.860 I mean, that's pretty wild, because in that, in the world, if you're an FBI, the stripes and the respect you have is the fact that,

00:18:38.840 you know, I'm all in.

00:18:40.080 You can trust me, you know, when I'm doing that.

00:18:41.980 When you take that away from me, what is my currency?

00:18:44.560 Then I got it.

00:18:45.320 Did you kind of feel like you have to keep constantly earning back that currency from the...

00:18:48.820 Well, people ask me about, a lot of people ask me why you didn't quit.

00:18:51.680 Well, I didn't quit because, number one, I didn't do anything wrong.

00:18:54.760 And number two, I had a family to raise.

00:18:56.380 And all I'd know was police work, so I wasn't quitting.

00:18:59.860 And then my father had taught me at a very young age, you get knocked down, you get up.

00:19:04.040 And that's what I did.

00:19:05.040 I said to the FBI, all right, if you think I'm somebody of that character, I'll show you.

00:19:10.000 And that's when I went and started making those cases and bringing in results.

00:19:14.040 But to this day, you can tell, 25 years later, I'm still pissed off.

00:19:18.220 To be falsely accused, and that's why I gave every bad guy,

00:19:21.200 I never put anybody in jail that I didn't know 110% because I was falsely accused of something.

00:19:27.740 So you have to make sure your evidence is locked in tight.

00:19:31.360 Did they finally find the money or no?

00:19:32.760 Did they finally find the heroin?

00:19:35.000 Well, they found some of it.

00:19:36.660 Most of it was sold.

00:19:38.480 And they arrested another FBI agent who set it up in a way that the finger would be pointed at me.

00:19:44.680 So somebody did end up doing the time for it.

00:19:46.620 25 years.

00:19:47.940 25 years.

00:19:48.980 Yes.

00:19:49.280 And they know it.

00:19:50.180 This is amongst all your peers, everybody knew that it was him that did it.

00:19:55.100 They knew after?

00:19:56.200 Yeah.

00:19:56.480 But during the time.

00:19:57.300 No, no, after.

00:19:58.080 After is what I'm talking about.

00:19:58.860 After, but there were still people after who still thought I may have been involved.

00:20:02.420 Yeah, and those are the people that you don't want to talk to for 25 years.

00:20:04.980 Now, I mean, that's pretty obvious.

00:20:05.920 You've got a lot of pride behind what you're doing.

00:20:07.760 So there's a funny story about the one where somebody who was an insider taking, trying to sign a $6 million deal to help the mafia make money.

00:20:19.460 And you found out about it as an inspector.

00:20:21.060 What happened there?

00:20:22.120 That was another mob case.

00:20:23.720 That case took place around 2006, 2008.

00:20:29.180 The head of the Boston organized crime family at that time was a guy named Carmen D'Annunzio.

00:20:34.640 And he was known as the Cheese Man because he operated a cheese shop in the North End, which was the Italian section of Boston.

00:20:41.720 That's the Patriarcha, was the Patriarcha family or something like that?

00:20:44.880 No, that's the earlier one.

00:20:46.380 So this is the New England LCN.

00:20:48.440 This is the Boston-based mob at the time.

00:20:51.660 So we had decimated them through other prosecutions.

00:20:54.540 So he was kind of the next in line.

00:20:56.760 But he wasn't a brain surgeon.

00:20:58.520 So he had friends who owned a dirt farm.

00:21:06.380 And they had toxic loom at the dirt farm that couldn't be used anywhere.

00:21:11.820 And D'Annunzio came up with the brilliant idea that he would sell it to the state of Massachusetts to be used in the construction of the Big Dig.

00:21:19.100 It's a big construction project up there.

00:21:21.040 So we got wind of it.

00:21:22.940 The FBI heard about it.

00:21:24.520 And I was asked to go undercover in that case and pose as a corrupt Massachusetts state official.

00:21:33.180 So I had to go to dirt school.

00:21:34.720 I didn't know there was such a thing where you have to go learn about dirt.

00:21:37.480 There's a lot of things to know about dirt.

00:21:39.780 But, again, getting back to that's what we have to do when we do these things.

00:21:43.880 If you're going to say you're a dirt inspector and you're going to go to a dirt farm, you better know to be able to – you can talk about dirt.

00:21:51.360 So I did my schooling.

00:21:53.280 The state of Massachusetts was tremendous, giving us an education and resources.

00:21:59.040 And I went out and posed as a corrupt state official.

00:22:02.360 How was that?

00:22:03.140 I mean, is this the time when you pull up with the car and you do what you do with the car?

00:22:06.140 Because that's pretty crazy.

00:22:07.320 I visualize and I'm thinking to myself, that's insanity.

00:22:09.840 No, but what that is, and if you looked at it, I used the Cesar Millan School of Training.

00:22:15.700 I used to love to watch Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer.

00:22:19.160 He would control dogs without them understanding he was controlling them.

00:22:23.000 And I took some of the techniques and I would practice on human beings.

00:22:27.180 And they're very effective.

00:22:29.020 And so when I pulled up that day, they're expecting some state inspector.

00:22:33.460 And so I borrowed a state truck, a huge lime green truck.

00:22:38.240 I had all the gear on, the hard hat, the boots.

00:22:41.780 I drove into the dirt farm at about 100 miles an hour.

00:22:45.760 And I just rode around spinning.

00:22:47.540 I ignored them for like 10 minutes.

00:22:49.660 I got out of their truck.

00:22:51.760 I went to the bathroom against the tire.

00:22:55.040 I didn't wash my hands.

00:22:56.180 And I went over and shook their hands and called them by the wrong name.

00:23:00.360 And the point being there that they think this is some nut, but at least they don't think it's an FBI agent.

00:23:06.600 And that was my, I made such a strong approach to them.

00:23:12.240 I didn't want them to think that I possibly could be there collecting evidence.

00:23:16.240 And they bought it.

00:23:17.760 How long was that?

00:23:18.340 How long was that undercover timeline on that one?

00:23:21.240 That case was quick.

00:23:22.460 That was maybe six months or less because it was going down the road when they asked me to,

00:23:28.040 once they had that opportunity, I jumped in quickly because I had previous experience with the LCN.

00:23:35.060 And, but the office had been trying to make a case for about two years.

00:23:39.380 And we made the, we made the case from the undercover technique in about 10 meetings.

00:23:46.940 So what's, what's a short case?

00:23:48.580 What's a long case?

00:23:49.300 I know you said 20 and a half years, one time being away from the family.

00:23:51.600 Well, what would be considered a short case?

00:23:53.240 A short case can literally be one day.

00:23:55.020 A good example that we talk about a little bit is these murder for hires come up or these robberies come up.

00:24:02.340 We get information that somebody wants to hire somebody to kill somebody.

00:24:07.000 We have to get in quickly.

00:24:09.020 We have to try to interrupt that.

00:24:11.040 So you may do that.

00:24:11.900 I did one, or you have bank robbers.

00:24:14.040 Guys want to rob banks.

00:24:15.100 And you need somebody to infiltrate the bank robbers before they do it.

00:24:21.300 You know, we're watching them.

00:24:22.580 We're hoping that they don't strike.

00:24:24.000 But if we have the ability to get next to them, we want to do that.

00:24:27.420 I did one bank robbery case where they wanted me to be the getaway driver.

00:24:32.160 And I had to secure weapons and the car.

00:24:35.080 And of the day of the robbery, I drove the two robbers up to the bank while the SWAT team was waiting.

00:24:40.240 And I let them out and I drove them away.

00:24:41.820 Come on.

00:24:42.560 How did they hire you, though?

00:24:44.160 How did they find out about you?

00:24:45.160 Again, I don't want to give too much to the other side.

00:24:48.700 But believe me, informants are critical to law enforcement, and I'll leave it at that.

00:24:52.740 Got it.

00:24:53.480 But then you've got to sell yourself.

00:24:55.480 You may get introduced, but then they've got to believe you're a bank robber.

00:25:00.280 So this is what I mean about the double lives. 0.83

00:25:03.160 You know, you're going home at night, but this is what Pistone said, and I say the same thing.

00:25:07.180 I know I'm an FBI agent.

00:25:08.440 I'm not a bank robber.

00:25:10.000 So I'm coaching baseball at night, and I'm robbing banks during the day, but I'm not robbing them.

00:25:14.180 I'm helping the SWAT team arrest them.

00:25:17.240 You know, so, again, so the general public isn't harmed.

00:25:20.500 How often did you go from a crazy thing you just did, helping robbers rob a bank or, you know, FBI agent cash the robbers, to actually go into the game?

00:25:28.040 How often was your life from, here's the FBI agent undercover, hey, baby, how are you doing?

00:25:32.460 Let me put you to sleep.

00:25:33.460 How often did that happen?

00:25:34.300 I tried to, as I got later in my career, when I started to understand undercover work, I built my undercover life around my family life in the sense that I would go to my kids' games.

00:25:47.120 Sometimes I would bring bad guys to the games.

00:25:49.220 Come on.

00:25:49.720 No, it's just, there's a way to do it.

00:25:52.220 I don't want to get too into the weeds, but there's a way to do it.

00:25:57.360 But my wife pointed out to me much later, you're missing your children growing up.

00:26:02.340 So that's when I took control of my schedule, and I would work nights, weekends, but I'd work around things that were important to my family.

00:26:10.760 So everything I could go to my family, events, you know, I would try to do that.

00:26:15.340 There's sometimes you just can't, as we all know.

00:26:17.440 But first responders, law enforcement, you don't get to pick your hours, but because of the specialty area I was in, I really did get to pick my hours.

00:26:26.760 If I had to meet a bad guy, I'd meet him at midnight rather than 6 o'clock when the game was.

00:26:31.520 So I tried to make up for lost time by doing it.

00:26:35.220 So when you worked with the three different families, you said the Russian mob, and then it was the three La Cosa Nostra families, 0.86

00:26:42.100 and then you're talking about the Sinaloa cartel with El Chapo.

00:26:45.820 Were you doing the case, or were you the actual undercover agent on these three families?

00:26:51.340 The three families, I was the undercover agent.

00:26:53.220 All three of them?

00:26:54.040 All three.

00:26:54.440 What was the biggest difference between the way the three families ran?

00:26:58.940 All right.

00:26:59.260 So my first one was 98-99.

00:27:03.000 That was against Merlino.

00:27:04.460 It's called the Merlino-Luisi.

00:27:06.340 There was a faction in Boston dealing with a faction in Philadelphia.

00:27:11.280 Joey Merlino was a very well-known mafia boss.

00:27:16.300 I couldn't meet directly with Merlino because I had been in Philadelphia and helped arrest him on a previous case.

00:27:23.300 So he would recognize me, or we suspected he would recognize me.

00:27:28.060 So I had to dance around that.

00:27:29.760 I would deal with the guys in Boston who were getting their marching orders from Philadelphia.

00:27:35.380 That case took about six months, and that was time intensive.

00:27:41.100 You had to be there at their beck and call.

00:27:44.320 Fast forward to 2000, I go do a case down against the Patriarca family in Rhode Island, a guy named Matty Guglia-Metti.

00:27:50.980 He was a captain coming out of prison, and we had information he was going to be the boss.

00:27:55.680 So I went down to start the case in Rhode Island in 2000 thinking it would take a year or two, and that ended up being five years straight.

00:28:03.800 So there's a six-month and a five years, and then the cheese man, the last one, was about a year or less.

00:28:10.160 So in total, it's about six, seven years pretty much full-time with them.

00:28:15.240 Culturally, it's kind of like being on three different sports teams.

00:28:17.720 What's the biggest difference between these three different organizations?

00:28:21.560 The Patriarca family was very sharp.

00:28:24.360 They were looking for law enforcement.

00:28:27.020 They were the brightest group we went against.

00:28:30.100 They were very hard to infiltrate.

00:28:31.600 It took me over two years just to meet the main guy.

00:28:35.160 That was a slow, methodical approach that we had to take, and that's going down there every day for two years, not even meeting the guy.

00:28:43.340 I finally met him, and then we had a chance to investigate further after I developed a relationship with him.

00:28:50.560 The other two groups, truthfully, weren't that intelligent because they let an unknown, me, into their inner circle.

00:28:59.080 Denunzio, the last case, he met with me a complete stranger.

00:29:02.940 It's unheard of.

00:29:03.640 He shouldn't have done it.

00:29:05.160 But the FBI, we don't mind.

00:29:07.380 We'll take advantage of that.

00:29:08.320 Of course, yeah.

00:29:09.320 And the same thing with the Luisi family and the Morlino family.

00:29:13.620 I was introduced by Ron Prevetti, the informant I spoke to.

00:29:16.120 So he had cachet with them.

00:29:18.680 So by him vouching for me, I was able to work my way into the top level right away.

00:29:24.160 And we did a drug case in the Philadelphia case.

00:29:29.480 We did a drug case in the Rhode Island case.

00:29:31.400 And then the bad dirt was the final one.

00:29:35.580 Who was the toughest one between the three?

00:29:38.740 Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, the patriarchal.

00:29:41.620 By far.

00:29:42.180 The Rhode Island, yeah.

00:29:43.640 He told me one day, he told me one day, Mike, you're telling me more things that I need to know.

00:29:50.200 I hope you're not telling me for the wrong reasons.

00:29:52.540 He basically told me he thought I was an FBI agent.

00:29:55.220 It was too late.

00:29:56.340 It was done.

00:29:57.200 He told you this?

00:29:58.300 Yeah.

00:29:59.320 What was your reaction when he said this to you?

00:30:01.820 I expected it to come, and I just played it off.

00:30:06.740 You've got to remember, these guys grew up around each other.

00:30:09.100 They go to grammar school together.

00:30:10.480 Their families know their family.

00:30:11.680 Who's the new kid on the block all the time?

00:30:14.060 So when things start going south, they're not going to look at the guy they grew up with.

00:30:17.360 They're going to look at the guy who last came into the game.

00:30:19.700 Why do they even trust a new guy?

00:30:21.740 Because they're all greedy, every one of them.

00:30:23.300 Every one of those cases were made because they were greedy to make money.

00:30:26.940 I presented opportunities in each of those cases to make money for the mob, and they'll do it.

00:30:35.140 The mob tells you they don't deal in drugs.

00:30:37.740 That's a complete myth.

00:30:41.120 They all deal in drugs because it's worth it.

00:30:43.320 It's a moneymaker.

00:30:45.020 All right?

00:30:45.620 So if you can make them money, they'll interact with you.

00:30:48.940 They'll be suspicious of you, but that's their Achilles heel.

00:30:54.340 Were you ever in a moment where you're kind of like, I could get killed?

00:30:56.520 Were you ever in a bad situation with those three families?

00:30:59.040 There was the one story that we tell that in the first case, the Philadelphia-Boston case,

00:31:06.060 we were about six months into it.

00:31:08.660 I had already bought drugs from them.

00:31:10.960 We were buying more drugs, and the FBI received information that they had learned my true identity.

00:31:17.400 The FBI wouldn't tell me how they learned that, which was the right play. 0.52

00:31:25.360 Myself and the case agent argued that we could go back, but we would only meet them out in the street where I could be watched.

00:31:31.640 And they reluctantly agreed to let us do that.

00:31:34.740 And, of course, not the first time, but the second time I went back, they motioned me into the coffee shop,

00:31:42.140 the social club where they hung out, and I tried to get them to come out, and, you know, we're in a standoff.

00:31:47.280 And finally I said, you know, I've got to go inside.

00:31:51.660 And you learn as an undercover, you have to, you can't shoot your way out of situations.

00:31:56.000 You've got to talk and think your way out of situations.

00:31:58.400 So I went into the club very reluctantly.

00:32:01.880 I had real bad feelings.

00:32:03.340 I knew the two guys behind me were armed.

00:32:05.280 There were two guys, two goons behind me.

00:32:07.880 And I went in where I had been in this place many of times, but this day, Bobby Luisi, the head guy, said,

00:32:14.920 Mike, we've got to go down in the basement, okay?

00:32:17.760 And you probably don't want to go down in the basement of a social club.

00:32:22.120 So I didn't have a choice.

00:32:24.180 I'm not going to fight my way out of it, so I had to think my way out of it.

00:32:27.260 I went down in the basement, and this is a funny story that very few people believe,

00:32:32.020 but those were the days of jukeboxes.

00:32:34.700 And as I went downstairs, Frank Sinatra's My Way was playing on the jukebox,

00:32:40.000 and that was the only song I ever heard my father sing in my life.

00:32:43.480 And he had been dead for 25 years, but it was almost like he was saying,

00:32:47.560 you're going to get out of this.

00:32:49.340 And it kind of relaxed me.

00:32:51.440 And then when they got me downstairs, they started to talk about more cocaine,

00:32:55.400 so it finally dawned on me they're not going to kill me.

00:32:58.280 And I collected more evidence, and I got out of there safely that day.

00:33:03.280 They asked them after they arrested them, they said,

00:33:06.160 what happened that day when you brought him in the basement?

00:33:08.700 And they said, we thought the FBI was following him as a bad guy,

00:33:13.720 and we brought him down in the basement to protect him.

00:33:16.680 But I wish they had told me that that day.

00:33:20.140 Wow, they thought the FBI was following you.

00:33:22.580 Yes.

00:33:23.360 And they brought you down to protect you.

00:33:25.440 So how are you staying calm in that moment?

00:33:27.700 How are you, and I know you're telling a story about your father with the idea of my way in 25 years.

00:33:31.480 But what is, and I'm sure this is not the only situation,

00:33:35.000 but what are you doing to just kind of stay calm?

00:33:37.180 Number one, you don't try to put yourself in that situation, okay?

00:33:41.900 You should pick up danger signals before it's too late.

00:33:45.720 So that's what you have to get better at when you do this.

00:33:48.660 Now, I knew that day, when I was outside that day,

00:33:51.140 and they started to try to get me inside, I should have just left.

00:33:54.080 But I was still relatively young undercover at that point.

00:33:57.900 And you've got to remember, FBI agents, for the most part, are type A personalities.

00:34:01.940 We can get the job done.

00:34:04.300 But the older I got, the smarter I got.

00:34:08.060 And 10 years later, I would have walked away that day.

00:34:11.740 I never would have went in that building.

00:34:13.200 You would have never gone in.

00:34:14.320 Never.

00:34:14.720 Why not?

00:34:15.200 And that's what I trained younger undercovers.

00:34:16.820 Why not?

00:34:17.240 Why wouldn't you have gone?

00:34:18.200 So I didn't get killed or hurt, okay?

00:34:20.660 No case is worth an agent getting killed or hurt for him.

00:34:25.100 If you asked a Joe Pistone that day if I should have gone in that building,

00:34:29.300 I guarantee you his answer is no.

00:34:30.860 Same.

00:34:31.580 Okay?

00:34:32.240 But, you know, once you're in something, you have to think and talk your way through it.

00:34:36.400 So what I do in training is I tell agents now,

00:34:40.080 rather than wait for the day somebody sticks a gun to your head,

00:34:43.020 start thinking about it now.

00:34:44.440 What are you going to do?

00:34:46.240 All right?

00:34:46.660 It's just life preservation.

00:34:48.980 You have to think these things through.

00:34:51.480 I grew up in a blue-collar environment.

00:34:53.960 I grew up with some people who ended up in jail.

00:34:56.720 So I wasn't uneasy in those circumstances.

00:34:59.960 I had dealt with guys like them.

00:35:01.800 And there's certain guys you've got to push at,

00:35:03.600 and other guys you've got to give them some space.

00:35:05.560 And you just have to learn that.

00:35:07.360 Well, some of the business...

00:35:08.140 There's no book that you can read about it.

00:35:09.260 I know.

00:35:09.560 That's what I'm saying.

00:35:10.200 So school and training, there's not really any kind of a training that they put you through.

00:35:13.160 There is training now.

00:35:14.120 There was none when I started.

00:35:15.100 Okay.

00:35:15.600 Got it.

00:35:15.960 So you had to get lucky picking a person to do the job, and not you, the person hiring you.

00:35:21.540 Back when I first started, if you were a cop or you were in the military,

00:35:25.900 the FBI thought you could work undercover.

00:35:27.840 Don't ask me why, because those are two of the most regimented professions in the world.

00:35:33.740 So I got picked to work undercover because I had been a cop.

00:35:37.000 Got it.

00:35:37.360 What's the most vicious thing you saw happen right in front of you?

00:35:40.720 You're sitting here like, oh, my God, I can't believe that just happened.

00:35:42.620 You had to stay calm.

00:35:43.600 The most vicious thing that happened to me did not happen to me undercover.

00:35:46.540 It happened during the Boston Marathon bombings, which I was also involved in just as an agent.

00:35:52.760 And I saw a lot of the destruction and carnage from that event, which was horrific.

00:35:58.040 You were there when it happened?

00:35:59.700 Yes.

00:36:00.940 I mean, I was in the city of Boston and responded to the event.

00:36:04.100 Got it.

00:36:04.720 Got it.

00:36:05.040 But anything with the undercover with mobs, did you see anything vicious right in front of you?

00:36:10.180 I never saw anybody killed, obviously.

00:36:12.220 I never saw anybody shot, anything like that.

00:36:14.360 Because you really have to, people think you go undercover and you just decide 10 minutes before you do something.

00:36:20.140 We put weeks and weeks and months into preparation so we don't put ourselves in a bad spot.

00:36:25.120 So when I went to do something with the mob, and this goes for all undercover agents or different cases,

00:36:31.120 you set yourself up for the most success and the least amount of risk.

00:36:35.360 So if you know there's a beef going on between two families, you don't want to be hanging out with them.

00:36:40.760 Be somewhere else.

00:36:41.860 So I would set up my persona that I couldn't be around 100% of the time.

00:36:47.060 I was making money doing something else, maybe somewhere else.

00:36:49.900 Because you can't, if you stick around with them full time, you're going to come into these situations.

00:36:55.820 During that first case I talked to you about, two of the subjects got into a road rage incident and killed a guy.

00:37:03.080 Now, if I was driving around in a car with them, I would have been at that scene.

00:37:07.720 But that's the type of thing.

00:37:08.780 There was no reason, if you're not there for a purpose to collect your evidence,

00:37:13.320 don't hang around with these guys because trouble's going to happen.

00:37:16.100 It's just inevitable.

00:37:16.720 So how long did you work on the Sinaloa case?

00:37:19.880 Did you say six months as well?

00:37:21.300 No, that was three years.

00:37:22.580 That was three years.

00:37:23.560 Did you ever get close to El Chapo?

00:37:25.400 Like were you ever near him?

00:37:27.140 No, I communicated with him through, actually we would communicate.

00:37:31.060 He was the world's most wanted fugitive.

00:37:32.980 He was hiding in the mountains of Mexico at that time.

00:37:35.660 So we knew we couldn't go into Mexico.

00:37:38.240 We also knew he wasn't coming out, obviously.

00:37:40.560 So we had to deal with his, what I called his executive board, his attorneys, his financial people.

00:37:46.100 And we dealt with one of his first cousins, a guy named Manuel.

00:37:50.880 And Manuel became the telephone.

00:37:53.160 I was supposed to be the El Jefe, the big shot in Sicily.

00:37:58.120 And I was communicating with Chapo through Manuel, his first cousin, who would return, come get the message, return to Mexico, go up in the mountains.

00:38:07.980 And then we started exchanging written messages on pesos.

00:38:13.840 So that was my communication method.

00:38:16.480 But we knew we were not going to have a face-to-face with Chapo.

00:38:20.620 We invited him to come see us in Italy.

00:38:24.080 And he thought about coming.

00:38:26.120 We called it the escape hatch plan if he wanted to flee Mexico and live in Europe.

00:38:30.520 He was communicating with us to do that.

00:38:33.180 But inevitably, he didn't.

00:38:35.720 Who was us?

00:38:36.480 Like who did he think you were?

00:38:37.580 Or he thought you were the Italian mafia, the boss?

00:38:39.200 He thought we were a Sicilian crime family.

00:38:41.360 He thought you were a Sicilian crime family.

00:38:42.440 We left the United States completely out of it.

00:38:45.000 If he knew that we were doing anything in the United States, he wouldn't have had anything to do with us.

00:38:49.620 We presented ourselves as we were looking for a cocaine market in Europe.

00:38:54.420 And he was looking for that opportunity at the same time.

00:38:58.160 So he thought he was dealing with the Sicilian mob.

00:39:01.820 Got it.

00:39:02.540 And do you speak the language or no?

00:39:04.600 Do you speak Italian at all?

00:39:05.720 I have trouble with English.

00:39:07.580 So how are you convincing these guys when you're speaking to his first cousin?

00:39:12.380 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:39:14.040 What happened was, in that case, we selected a Sicilian-speaking undercover agent, a very skilled agent out of Newark Division, who was going to be the boss.

00:39:24.420 Two weeks, three weeks before the case, he got a private sector opportunity.

00:39:28.680 He was close to retirement.

00:39:29.880 He had to take the job.

00:39:30.920 He apologized profusely, but he had to take the job.

00:39:33.800 So we were stuck without anybody.

00:39:37.140 And at that point, that's at the, towards the end of my career, I was confident, even though I didn't speak Italian, I didn't speak Spanish, I was confident we could make a case if we did it right.

00:39:47.160 And that's what I mean about learning from doing it over and over again.

00:39:50.000 You understand what they're looking for.

00:39:51.740 So I told them very early on in English that I didn't want to speak to them in Italian because the Italian police were listening to our phones, and that would cause them a problem.

00:40:02.680 So they appreciated that I would only speak to them in English and directly not on the phone.

00:40:07.300 But I told them from the beginning I only spoke English because I didn't want them to bring an Italian speaker to the meetings. 1.00

00:40:12.560 And I had Spanish-speaking agents with me, and the majority of the conversations took place in Spanish.

00:40:17.900 The majority of the conversations took place in Spanish.

00:40:19.840 So what did the lawyer, El Chapo's lawyer, say to you guys?

00:40:23.620 He said, what, you guys are more disciplined than us?

00:40:25.780 Yes.

00:40:26.560 We were in the middle of negotiating a huge cocaine deal, and we had a facility that we used in Florida that was part of our shtick.

00:40:36.720 And we had a meeting one night where, in the middle of the cocaine negotiations, he asked to speak privately to me and another undercover agent.

00:40:45.640 And we went outside, and he asked us, would we be willing to launder money for the Sinaloa cartel?

00:40:52.080 Now, we were in the middle of a cocaine deal.

00:40:54.440 Money laundering goes hand-in-hand with that.

00:40:56.460 And we said, you know, let's get this cocaine thing wrapped up, and then we'll think about how much money.

00:41:00.900 He said, just a little bit of money.

00:41:02.260 I said, how much?

00:41:02.960 He said, $500 million to start.

00:41:05.180 That's what they considered a little bit of money, yeah.

00:41:08.240 So we turned him down, and that's when he said, Chapo told me to tell you that you're the only organization we have dealt with that are more disciplined than we are.

00:41:20.660 So, again, we weren't acting like law enforcement.

00:41:23.900 We turned down $500 million worth of laundered money.

00:41:27.860 Why did you turn it down?

00:41:29.440 Because it would have interrupted the drug case.

00:41:31.600 There were too many logistical challenges to doing that.

00:41:37.720 It's something we pursued later in a different way.

00:41:40.780 But, again, going back to the state inspector driving in that truck and doing all that, who turns down $500 million?

00:41:48.260 Cops?

00:41:48.980 Never.

00:41:49.700 So, you know, we had to convince them every day.

00:41:51.780 This was three years of investigation.

00:41:53.440 Every day we had to be on our toes with them until the end when we actually did get the shipment.

00:41:58.220 Let me ask you a complete curveball question here.

00:42:01.220 How much similarity does the FBI as an organization have to the mob?

00:42:07.160 You're trying to set me up, so I'll be careful here.

00:42:09.380 What I call the old mob, the real, true Italian LCN mob, where there was structure and hierarchies, it's a chain of command, just like the FBI or the U.S. military.

00:42:24.160 There is a chain of command, all right?

00:42:26.260 And you have to understand your position and what you have to do.

00:42:30.140 Now, I'm making no association that the FBI is like the mob, other than in structure, chain of command, reporting up the chain.

00:42:39.900 So that would be the only similarity between the two that I would say is prevalent in comparing the two.

00:42:49.020 I had a John A. Light here, he was a former Albanian associate of the Gotti family, and he said what made the mob work is fear and structure.

00:42:59.100 Because there was the fear if you cross the line and you don't do it, the highest level of fear is what?

00:43:03.800 You know, you're going to get killed.

00:43:05.460 And then structure with the whole levels and hierarchy and, you know, rituals and all that other stuff.

00:43:11.420 Was that pretty normal with all the three families that you were working on to cover?

00:43:14.640 Yes, you knew who reported to who, and that was the key, and that's just like in the FBI.

00:43:19.960 You're not going to get killed in the FBI if you don't do your job, but you're going to lose your position.

00:43:25.760 Something's going to happen.

00:43:26.620 There's consequences to your actions, and that's why the mob was easier to investigate because somebody couldn't go wild off the reservation.

00:43:35.140 If they decided they were going to do something serious, they had to go up three, four levels to get the okay, and that's what we appreciated.

00:43:42.100 And so we focused our attention, obviously, on the decision makers.

00:43:46.880 Those are the Guglia Medis, the Merlinos, the Denunzios.

00:43:51.360 We want to get into that decision-making executive level of the crime families because we're dealing with the people who are deciding at the end what's going to be done.

00:44:01.320 Was there anything you saw that was honorable that they did?

00:44:03.640 The only thing I tell people, I felt bad about one thing, and all the time I did that.

00:44:09.320 In the Providence case, the Patriarch of Family case, Matty Googie and Matty's dad died during the investigation.

00:44:18.020 His father was a mobster, and Matty took over for his dad, but his father was elderly, and he passed away.

00:44:24.480 And I went to the services, as I was expected to do, and at the service, I was told that I needed to go into the family crypt where they were burying their father.

00:44:35.560 And I was brought into the family burial site with basically the immediate family, and I had a tape recorder running.

00:44:42.340 And I didn't really feel very good that day.

00:44:47.080 That was not a day to collect evidence.

00:44:48.800 That was a family that was legitimately grieving.

00:44:51.260 So I did feel, you know, I did feel some remorse for doing it.

00:44:55.060 I didn't have a choice.

00:44:56.000 Obviously, I can't stop and take the recorder off.

00:44:58.280 Were you upset with yourself that you felt remorse, or no?

00:45:01.200 No, because I think that's human nature.

00:45:02.940 When somebody's family member dies, I'd like to think, you know, yeah, are they mobsters?

00:45:07.360 Yes, but they also have family.

00:45:08.720 And some of these guys are very, very good family members.

00:45:13.680 But again, they choose their path, and, you know, we react accordingly.

00:45:18.560 If somebody's not in the business, we're not going to go out and find them.

00:45:23.060 There's a reason somebody's name comes to the attention of the FBI, and it's usually because they're up to no good.

00:45:28.220 Do you trust the FBI?

00:45:29.240 I know after seven years, you kind of have a falling out with them, and you had a chip on your shoulder while you did 50-plus cases.

00:45:33.640 But do you trust, again, let me preface this.

00:45:37.720 I know you respect law enforcement, cops, all of that.

00:45:40.640 But do you trust the FBI organization, what they stand for?

00:45:46.720 Yes.

00:45:47.200 You do?

00:45:47.820 Yes, overall.

00:45:50.240 That's a safe answer.

00:45:51.560 The institution, the history, I respect tremendously.

00:45:56.440 I've had differences with individuals within the FBI.

00:46:00.800 I've had individuals in the FBI that I think should not have been in the positions that they were.

00:46:06.760 But overall, 99.5% of all FBI personnel are honorable and do the right thing.

00:46:13.360 Do you think most directors are honorable and do the right things, or would you say some of them are not?

00:46:18.100 Well, that's so far out of my stratosphere.

00:46:22.280 There are some directors that I liked.

00:46:24.680 There are some directors I didn't care for because of just policy and internal decisions they made.

00:46:30.880 The FBI should be under the radar.

00:46:34.960 You should not be hearing, seeing the FBI in the daily news.

00:46:38.200 The reason why I ask that is because, you know, for me, you know, unions get started for good reasons.

00:46:45.580 The basic foundation of a union is what?

00:46:48.720 Hey, you're not taking care of the employees.

00:46:50.900 Why don't you pay them a little bit more?

00:46:52.300 Guys, let's go on a strike. 0.99

00:46:53.540 Two days.

00:46:54.060 Okay, we'll take them up.

00:46:55.760 We'll pay you more.

00:46:56.720 We want some benefits.

00:46:57.720 These people are hurting, but they want to go to the doctor.

00:47:00.020 Okay, we'll take care of them, right?

00:47:01.440 And a union becomes what?

00:47:02.720 A political machine is what it becomes, especially today, right?

00:47:05.880 Okay, did the FBI get started for the right reasons back in the days with Hoover?

00:47:11.140 Sure.

00:47:11.660 It was good reasons.

00:47:12.520 We needed something because there was things going on, espionage, whatever you want to call it.

00:47:16.200 Say the foundation was true.

00:47:18.280 Do you think it's a little too big and intrusive and trying to get into every one of your business today

00:47:24.860 where the American citizen is sitting there saying,

00:47:27.440 I don't know if I trust the FBI like I did at one point, maybe?

00:47:30.580 I'd like to think that the majority of the American population trusts the FBI.

00:47:34.780 They should.

00:47:35.880 As I said, 99.5% of FBI personnel are doing the right thing.

00:47:42.240 That's all I can tell you.

00:47:43.880 Now, the recent events over the last couple of years, it's embarrassing to the FBI.

00:47:48.980 We shouldn't be in the news.

00:47:50.840 We shouldn't be involved in any political shenanigans, either side.

00:47:56.080 I'm not telling you one side or the other, anything like that.

00:48:00.300 But the FBI has taken a huge beating in the last few years, which upsets me, obviously.

00:48:07.200 I love the FBI.

00:48:08.380 I will love it until the day I die.

00:48:10.040 All right?

00:48:10.400 But I'm trying to tell people, because I get asked this question a million times now.

00:48:14.280 In 30 years, I never got asked.

00:48:15.840 In the last two years, I get asked 100 times.

00:48:17.640 Literally, you're saying this.

00:48:18.540 In 30 years, you never got asked?

00:48:19.800 You didn't ask that?

00:48:20.760 Never.

00:48:21.700 This has only been, literally, almost since I retired.

00:48:24.260 Two years, three years.

00:48:25.540 Oh, okay.

00:48:25.980 So people haven't asked because they didn't know you were an FBI agent.

00:48:28.580 No.

00:48:28.800 People that knew I was an FBI agent never asked.

00:48:31.780 They still never asked this question.

00:48:32.340 No.

00:48:32.820 Do you think partly, you know how you talk to some folks and you read history of the mob

00:48:37.200 and for the most part, it was very low-key.

00:48:39.740 You didn't go around flashing what you did.

00:48:41.820 You didn't dress up in fur coats.

00:48:43.220 You know, all these stories, very consistent with most mobs.

00:48:46.440 Anybody that gets a little too flashy and they say, God, he got a little too flashy.

00:48:50.320 You know, the Teflon Don, he would get out and walk around in these nice $2,000, $3,000 Brioni suits

00:48:55.200 and he got a little bit of attention to it, right?

00:48:56.780 Do you think Comey did a little bit of that by getting a little too much attention to the FBI

00:49:02.320 that it shouldn't have gotten?

00:49:04.220 I'll never compare Jim Comey to John Gotti.

00:49:06.720 I don't think that's fair to do.

00:49:09.620 The only reason I'm making that comparison is because you are in both worlds.

00:49:12.340 Right.

00:49:12.520 I still don't know if I'm making that comparison.

00:49:13.320 And my answer would be no.

00:49:14.940 There's no comparison between the two.

00:49:17.580 I don't agree with everything Director Comey did or has done,

00:49:21.720 and especially post his FBI service.

00:49:26.440 Yeah.

00:49:27.200 When he was a director, he had the support of the rank and file,

00:49:31.720 and it was only after the what I call shenanigans, whatever you want to describe,

00:49:36.440 when he became more involved in the public discussion.

00:49:44.080 I just don't think that's right.

00:49:45.740 You know, people use the argument against me.

00:49:47.500 Why are you writing a book?

00:49:48.380 Well, I didn't open my mouth for 30 years.

00:49:50.460 Everything that's in that book, you can go into a courthouse and find.

00:49:53.420 I never revealed one thing that's not public record.

00:49:57.060 The FBI should not be engaged or involved in day-to-day activities,

00:50:02.940 especially in this political world.

00:50:05.820 That's a very good point.

00:50:06.320 So everything you are writing about, it's public.

00:50:09.440 So there are some things that happen that you will never tell us about.

00:50:13.080 There's a lot of things you'll never hear from me.

00:50:15.920 That's what I'm saying.

00:50:16.700 Yes.

00:50:16.940 I'll take FBI secrets to my grave.

00:50:18.880 That's what I respect.

00:50:19.740 No, no.

00:50:20.060 I'm saying, but you're saying that is not happening.

00:50:22.320 A lot of that is not happening today.

00:50:24.260 No, I'm not saying.

00:50:24.860 I can't speak for anyone other than myself.

00:50:26.600 What you're seeing happening on TV, though, when you watch the media and the news,

00:50:29.480 and maybe we have more information from the FBI than we should.

00:50:32.700 Is that kind of what you're saying?

00:50:33.480 Well, I would use, if you've noticed, the new FBI director, Director Wray,

00:50:38.140 who I don't know and I never served under.

00:50:40.640 We haven't heard much from him, and that's a good thing.

00:50:43.360 That's the way the FBI should operate.

00:50:45.160 So when you hear everybody wants to know about Comey, McCabe, and that crowd,

00:50:51.600 that's so foreign to a street agent like myself.

00:50:55.040 They're head of a corporation.

00:50:56.740 We don't just walk down the hall and pop our head in their office.

00:51:01.040 It's two different worlds.

00:51:02.320 That's executive management.

00:51:04.260 That's the leadership of the FBI, but 95% of the FBI is out in the streets of the country.

00:51:10.940 How do you view them?

00:51:11.680 How do they view you?

00:51:12.360 Is it similar to military, infantry, your infantry, and then there's the guys at the offices

00:51:18.460 that are doing what they're doing?

00:51:20.240 Is that kind of how you guys view each other?

00:51:21.440 Yes, they're at the highest levels of the FBI making decisions that affect the entire FBI in the country,

00:51:28.540 and we're doing our investigations in the cities that we work.

00:51:32.420 So I was more interested in helping defeat crime in Boston than anything coming out of Washington, D.C.

00:51:40.260 Interesting. And are a lot of FBI agents motivated to go out there and become directors one day, or no?

00:51:45.240 Most undercovers are just kind of like, this is what I enjoy doing, leave me alone.

00:51:48.940 That's how most street agents, we call them street agents who are just doing the investigations.

00:51:53.340 People in management want to go up the chain, but they're not going to get to the director.

00:51:56.760 The only director that's ever been an FBI agent was Louis Free.

00:52:02.040 Louis Free was by far the best FBI director I ever served under.

00:52:05.880 Wow. Do you think it helped the fact that he was undercover?

00:52:08.240 A thousand percent.

00:52:09.280 No, he worked, not only did he work undercover, he was a case agent, he was a street agent.

00:52:14.980 He understood our job.

00:52:16.340 Other directors come from different, they come from legal firms.

00:52:23.060 They didn't have agents' perspective.

00:52:26.000 Now, they're very, obviously, they're very honorable and intelligent people,

00:52:29.620 but they haven't been in a squad area and worked a case.

00:52:34.100 What year was he the director?

00:52:35.540 Louis Free was a director in the early 80s.

00:52:39.680 He was a director under President Clinton.

00:52:42.140 I think he was like 83 to...

00:52:44.460 83 would be Reagan.

00:52:45.520 Right, because Carter's not in 81, 82.

00:52:49.100 Yeah, no, I don't...

00:52:50.020 He was under...

00:52:50.840 Louis Free was when President Clinton was in office.

00:52:54.000 In 92.

00:52:54.660 92.

00:52:55.180 Got it.

00:52:55.520 Interesting, yeah.

00:52:56.560 92 to 2000, somewhere around that time.

00:53:00.220 You know, just a random question since we're still on this topic.

00:53:03.900 What do you think should be the government's involvement with people?

00:53:08.560 And here's what I mean by it.

00:53:09.580 You know, we're going in a direction right now where it's kind of like,

00:53:11.680 you know, what is the cutoff for how much privacy we should have,

00:53:16.560 and what is the cutoff for how much protection we should have as citizens,

00:53:20.280 where the government knows best for us?

00:53:22.220 I ask this question because, you know, just recently, I mean, you read about this stuff

00:53:26.640 with this whole thing on Apple versus FBI.

00:53:29.240 Hey, give us the phone information on this terrorist.

00:53:33.440 And, you know, no, I don't want to do it because I'm kind of breaking my privacy.

00:53:37.940 But you should give it because we can catch the bad guy.

00:53:40.400 And you kind of put the CEO of the company in a rough position.

00:53:42.600 And, you know, even the other one with the FBI and ICE, you know,

00:53:46.960 driver's license photos are not goldmine for them because Washington Post did an article

00:53:51.580 talking about that agents are scanning millions of Americans' faces without their knowledge or consent.

00:53:56.340 And I represent Jim Jordan says this should not be happening without anybody's consent.

00:54:00.100 So what is the fine line between, hey, give me some privacy versus we know what's best to protect the nation?

00:54:05.900 All right.

00:54:06.140 I'll answer that as first a private citizen and then as an FBI, a retired FBI.

00:54:10.420 I appreciate that.

00:54:11.000 As a private citizen, I'd always be concerned about any intrusion into the privacy of American citizens.

00:54:19.060 But from a law enforcement standpoint, when we go to Apple, now I'm speaking as a retired agent,

00:54:25.880 when we go to Apple, when we go to try to do things, if it is in the deterrence of crime

00:54:32.780 and especially in national security or terrorism-related matters,

00:54:37.520 I'll leave it up to the constitutional scholars how far the line should be moved.

00:54:44.260 But if you don't have access, the technology is outpacing law.

00:54:48.960 So things that are happening with technology now, the legal system is racing to catch up with.

00:54:55.740 And just because something that was put into law in 1950 may not be applicable today.

00:55:04.680 We're here on this sacred day of 9-11.

00:55:07.420 That's when we're speaking to you today, okay?

00:55:09.560 If everybody goes back to 9-11 and how they felt that day,

00:55:14.220 I think you'd have a lot more people remembering what it's like to be under terrorist attack.

00:55:19.120 So we have to adjust to the time and the technology that we're currently...

00:55:25.380 Because the FBI, regardless of what people may think,

00:55:28.460 the FBI is not asking Apple to open up something just to peek into some of these books.

00:55:33.980 There's a law enforcement reason.

00:55:36.240 That's why we get court orders or subpoenas or warrants.

00:55:41.080 It's done in a proper manner.

00:55:42.900 But we have to...

00:55:44.800 We don't want these modern technologies defeating us as a nation.

00:55:49.120 But doesn't it start that way?

00:55:50.700 Doesn't it start with an honorable motive?

00:55:52.500 We would be here for weeks if we were going back and forth on this issue.

00:55:57.040 Well, you know what I'm talking about when I say this.

00:55:58.880 So, you know, when I say start, it starts like that.

00:56:01.300 Again, for me, I was in the U.S. Army.

00:56:03.580 And I did it proudly.

00:56:04.620 One of the best decisions I ever made.

00:56:05.940 101st Airborne.

00:56:07.560 I would have done it 10 out of 10 times.

00:56:09.780 And when I got out, I went to the FBI building in L.A., and I wanted to be one.

00:56:15.220 And I went out there, filled out all the information.

00:56:17.920 I'm interested.

00:56:18.720 It was a freeze.

00:56:19.620 I wanted to be a firefighter, and I wanted to be FBI.

00:56:22.080 One of the two.

00:56:22.600 There was a freeze on fire department on hiring firefighters for five years.

00:56:26.260 I was going to go to El Camino College,

00:56:27.800 because that's where they gave you all the basic requirements schooling to take to go be a firefighter.

00:56:32.640 I think some of it had to do CPR and some of these other things I had to take.

00:56:36.280 And I want to be an agent.

00:56:37.140 So I wanted to go the route you went.

00:56:40.600 Essentially, eventually things changed, and I went to the financial services side.

00:56:44.460 One of the reasons I'm asking this is, as an immigrant that escaped Iran to come here,

00:56:47.500 because sometimes in Iran they were worried about, you know,

00:56:50.340 the government wanting a little bit too much control over the people.

00:56:54.600 You know, you keep that as a paranoia of a,

00:56:59.380 these institutions are getting a little too big and too powerful.

00:57:02.640 You know, shouldn't I be a little bit worried about that?

00:57:03.660 Well, if you look at the world history, I can understand that.

00:57:06.060 I think you have to concentrate on U.S. history and the checks and balances that we have in place

00:57:10.820 and we continue to have in place.

00:57:12.320 If you've noticed, a lot of the provisions that were put in place after 9-11 have gone out of,

00:57:18.560 they've been discontinued.

00:57:20.160 So there is a, and again, I'm not trying to say that the FBI does everything perfect.

00:57:26.120 We don't.

00:57:27.020 We're human beings.

00:57:28.340 But this idea that the government is doing something for nefarious reasons, I can't support.

00:57:34.580 I've never seen it in 30-plus years.

00:57:37.160 When you were talking about, you know, technology is outpacing law,

00:57:40.740 what do you think is a solution for that?

00:57:42.400 I think the law has to catch up quickly.

00:57:45.920 How do we do that?

00:57:46.840 Well, again, I leave this to people who are much more in tune with what has to be done,

00:57:53.660 but some of the wiretap, the electronic surveillance laws that we operate,

00:57:59.260 haven't been changed for 40, 50 years.

00:58:02.220 The Internet has completely changed the world, including the FBI.

00:58:05.860 You have to address these emerging technical trends so legally there's some type of balance, okay?

00:58:15.020 If you tell me that Apple has the computer of somebody who's threatened to blow up Grand Central Station,

00:58:21.380 the FBI should get in there somehow.

00:58:23.680 That's a national emergency.

00:58:25.480 Should.

00:58:26.040 Should, absolutely.

00:58:28.140 Got it.

00:58:29.100 It's the preservation of human life.

00:58:31.920 That's, you know, it's just...

00:58:33.520 You're making a very good case.

00:58:34.460 I'm not pushing you because I'm disagreeing with you.

00:58:36.680 No, I appreciate your...

00:58:37.660 The only reason I'm saying this is because you are right.

00:58:39.640 We're living in a different time where, you know, some of the people that...

00:58:43.680 The most dangerous criminals today is a 15-year-old hacker that knows how to get into systems.

00:58:47.940 So it's not the same kind of method of committing crime as it was maybe when you were coming up as an FBI.

00:58:53.260 Today you would have to be a completely different FBI.

00:58:55.080 So I'm appreciating your perspective.

00:58:56.860 I would never have been hired in today's FBI, I can tell you that,

00:59:00.240 because I don't have the background or the skill set to the threats that we're facing now.

00:59:05.400 The threats now versus 30 years ago are completely different.

00:59:09.060 What are they?

00:59:09.580 Is it more mainly cyber security?

00:59:12.220 Cyber espionage, economic theft.

00:59:16.460 It's a global world.

00:59:18.340 So you as a citizen, not as a civilian, not as an agent, from the perspective of a citizen, we the people,

00:59:27.740 would you be comfortable on certain cases, the government having access to certain phone files with companies

00:59:36.220 or Facebook or Google or Apple or some of those to help us prevent a major disaster from taking place?

00:59:42.820 I would have to have a specific example.

00:59:46.000 I don't want to talk in generalities.

00:59:48.380 But if something involves the preservation of life,

00:59:52.220 then there should be law enforcement exceptions to obtain that information.

00:59:57.620 It's the same thing.

00:59:58.800 There's a statute that we've used.

01:00:01.760 We actually used it in the Boston Marathon bombings.

01:00:04.640 Quarles versus New York.

01:00:06.140 If you look up Quarles versus New York, a gentleman named Quarles committed a crime

01:00:11.760 and ran into a grocery store and threw the gun away, if I remember correctly.

01:00:15.640 He discarded a weapon.

01:00:17.740 And the police chased him, and they asked him where the weapon was before they provided him his Miranda warnings.

01:00:24.260 And that case was upheld through our Supreme Court

01:00:26.920 because the potential harm to the general public outweighed providing him his Miranda warnings.

01:00:33.100 So there's a loaded gun somewhere in the store that some kid can pick up, et cetera.

01:00:37.280 That's what I'm saying on this technology trend.

01:00:40.700 We have to be able to get information when there's a clear definition that harm is coming.

01:00:46.760 It's just such a fine line.

01:00:48.420 You know, such a fine line.

01:00:49.360 I'll leave that to others.

01:00:51.260 Sure, yeah.

01:00:52.040 But you're asking from a law enforcement.

01:00:53.600 And as a private citizen, I don't even like when Google brings me to a location.

01:00:58.740 I don't like that.

01:00:59.460 Okay, I don't like a phone that's being able to say where I am, but I understand it.

01:01:04.460 But this is where that balance has to come in, in my humble opinion.

01:01:08.880 Yeah, I'm just curious to know, at what point do the people have enough say in this

01:01:13.840 to where they feel the level of comfort for it to happen?

01:01:17.900 And at what point do the people not have access to all the information to allow the FBI, who

01:01:25.220 is not like a Comey that's a public figure, maybe a guy that's more low-key, to make the

01:01:29.520 decisions, knowing they have access to information that we don't know about?

01:01:32.180 That part we can never know anything about.

01:01:33.480 But I think that's the responsibility of our elected representatives, our Congress and our

01:01:37.520 House of Representatives.

01:01:38.640 They're the ones who legislate laws.

01:01:39.880 We vote for it, and we vote for it to see who we feel is going to do the best job in

01:01:43.380 these areas.

01:01:43.920 That's the American system, right?

01:01:45.520 And that's why I'm in America, believe me.

01:01:47.400 That's why I'm in America.

01:01:48.520 And for me, I am most confident with this system than a lot of other systems out there.

01:01:55.340 Agreed.

01:01:55.620 So for me, I don't agree with this whole notion of keep pushing for a perfect system, because

01:02:00.860 I don't think utopia exists.

01:02:02.060 I don't think there's anywhere where unicorns fly.

01:02:04.700 And if there is, it's only in the movies and cartoons.

01:02:07.300 In real life, things get pretty ugly at times.

01:02:10.260 And some of the decisions, we are better off not knowing everything about.

01:02:14.640 I mean, don't get me wrong.

01:02:15.420 I'm not talking about free press, let's take it out.

01:02:17.180 That's not what I'm talking about.

01:02:18.360 But some stuff, sometimes, it's a little too much information.

01:02:21.280 So how was it when Sylvester Stallone approached you about the story?

01:02:24.660 Did you kind of go out?

01:02:25.460 Did somebody pitch it for you?

01:02:26.620 Did somebody reach out to you?

01:02:27.620 How did that take place?

01:02:29.180 What happened on that end, the book had not even been released.

01:02:33.480 And without my knowledge, or without my advanced knowledge, a proposal was sent to his company.

01:02:45.400 And from what I understand, he jumped on it right away.

01:02:49.460 He enjoyed the story.

01:02:50.960 I later met with him to discuss it.

01:02:54.620 We reached an agreement, and we are moving forward on that project.

01:03:00.280 Moving forward on that project.

01:03:01.340 Have you been with them face-to-face?

01:03:03.020 Have you guys?

01:03:03.800 You have.

01:03:04.600 And when should we expect this movie to come out?

01:03:07.700 I have no idea.

01:03:09.400 That's them.

01:03:10.460 That's them.

01:03:11.520 Again, this is just something.

01:03:12.860 That's why you mentioned it earlier, and I appreciate the opportunity.

01:03:18.540 I'm appearing on your show because of this book.

01:03:21.060 But what's important to me is the 30 years I did in the FBI.

01:03:24.540 So whatever happens post-FBI happens.

01:03:28.600 It's not really an overriding issue for me.

01:03:32.280 I think I did what I was asked to do for a long time.

01:03:35.220 I did it as well as I could, and that's what's important to me.

01:03:38.880 This post-FBI stuff, what happens, happens, and I'll just enjoy the ride.

01:03:43.020 Yeah, and I heard, read somewhere, that you are now a consultant to Hollywood.

01:03:48.340 When they make movies, was it Equalizer that you were a consultant?

01:03:51.600 I worked on Equalizer 2.

01:03:53.680 Equalizer 2.

01:03:54.380 Antoine Fuqua directed Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal.

01:03:58.260 I tried my hand at that, yeah.

01:03:59.900 And you're coaching Denzel on what to do in certain parts to get him to understand the role?

01:04:04.300 You just bring a law enforcement side to the...

01:04:07.520 When they'll show you something, is this realistic?

01:04:10.220 Well, no, because A, B, and C.

01:04:12.520 So when somebody asks you a question, you're a job.

01:04:14.660 Like Pedro Pascal, one of the...

01:04:16.520 We had to teach him how to properly shoot an assault weapon.

01:04:21.020 And the first time he grabbed it, it was embarrassing, which he admitted.

01:04:24.120 But, you know, he got pretty good at it by the end.

01:04:26.920 How was Denzel working with Denzel Washington?

01:04:29.900 I had limited contact with him.

01:04:31.980 He's, obviously, he's the star of the show.

01:04:34.380 So he didn't need a lot of law enforcement.

01:04:36.720 The one scene that I did help them with was there was a scene in a dining room where some violence occurred.

01:04:44.040 And he's trying to figure it out.

01:04:45.980 So I had to show them different things that you look for, a homicide, things like that.

01:04:50.560 And it was just trying something new.

01:04:54.320 Well, you know, once again, for anybody to give 35 years of their life to protect and serve citizens, that's an honorable thing to do.

01:05:05.980 That's a long time of your life.

01:05:07.200 Especially, I think, you had three kids and missing a lot of moments and putting yourself on the line with two and a half years and writing this book for your wife and three kids and her doing what she did for you.

01:05:16.820 Lots of respect for you doing that because it's not a job many people would like to have.

01:05:23.260 I know you didn't.

01:05:23.960 You said you recommend other people doing it because you had a great time doing it.

01:05:26.700 But it takes a certain level of willingness to serve for a bigger purpose to give 35 years of your life to a country.

01:05:33.760 And you did that.

01:05:34.400 I respect you for doing that.

01:05:35.740 And so here's what I would say if you want to go out and read the book.

01:05:39.240 Sylvester Stallone is not going to go out and pick up a script and say, oh, you know, any book, I'm going to go out and make a movie about it.

01:05:43.480 There's a reason for it.

01:05:45.360 And there's a lot of stories here that we didn't get into.

01:05:47.920 And with that being said, again, thank you for your service.

01:05:50.400 I appreciate you flying out here to Dallas.

01:05:52.040 Thank you very much.

01:05:52.800 Thank you for having me.

01:05:53.560 Anytime.

01:05:54.280 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

01:05:55.520 And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.

01:06:00.160 Give us a five-star.

01:06:01.560 Write a review if you haven't already.

01:06:02.900 And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

01:06:09.100 Just search my name, Patrick MidDavid.

01:06:10.840 And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.

01:06:15.980 With that being said, have a great day today.

01:06:17.720 Take care, everybody.

01:06:18.440 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - October 09, 2019

Episode 377： Undercover FBI Agent Exposes Sinaloa Cartel & La Cosa Nostra

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