Valuetainment - FBI Agent Who Negotiated With David Koresh During The Waco Siege

00:00:00.000 30 seconds.

00:00:01.860 Did you ever think you would make it?

00:00:04.560 I feel I'm so close I could take sweet victory.

00:00:07.640 I know this life meant for me.

00:00:10.760 Yeah, why would you bet on Goliath when we got Bet David?

00:00:14.580 Valuetainment, giving values contagious.

00:00:16.440 This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to haters.

00:00:19.180 How they run, homie? 1.00

00:00:20.140 Look what I become.

00:00:21.420 I'm the one.

00:00:22.420 I'm Patrick Bet David, the host of Valuetainment.

00:00:24.180 Today I'm sitting down with Gary Nessner,

00:00:25.860 who is the official chief FBI negotiator.

00:00:29.000 He had like a few hundred FBI agents that reported to him,

00:00:32.100 and he was the main one that negotiated with David Koresh during the Waco siege.

00:00:36.120 This is very interesting.

00:00:37.780 Gary, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:00:40.340 Thank you, Patrick.

00:00:41.120 It's a pleasure to be with you today.

00:00:42.600 It's good to have you on.

00:00:43.380 So, Gary, some of us sell life insurance for a living.

00:00:48.480 Some people save lives for a living through negotiation.

00:00:51.820 It's a very different life of yours and mine of what you did for a living.

00:00:55.980 And is that story true that when you watch J. Edgar Hoover on Mickey Mouse Club,

00:01:00.840 that inspired you want to be an FBI agent?

00:01:03.580 Yeah, it was probably 1958.

00:01:06.040 I was a young kid, and I was born in 1950.

00:01:09.620 And I saw that on TV.

00:01:11.860 I didn't know anything about the FBI before then, but something clicked with me.

00:01:16.100 It sounded like a very interesting, challenging, prestigious job.

00:01:21.580 And, of course, back then in that era, the FBI was sort of held up on a pedestal in a way that may not be true today.

00:01:29.800 So it just really inspired me, and it became a goal of mine.

00:01:33.740 And, you know, many, many, many years later, it came true, and I was never disappointed.

00:01:38.600 By the way, what a recruiting method, you know, if you think about it.

00:01:41.420 Like, really, what a way to go out there and, you know, have – was J. Edgar Hoover really on Mickey Mouse Club?

00:01:46.760 And if he was, what did he say on Mickey Mouse Club?

00:01:48.700 I'm curious.

00:01:49.300 I don't remember what he said, but the show, you know, I know they had other iterations of it,

00:01:54.740 but that early show was sort of a kid's variety show.

00:01:57.260 You know, they did skits and movies and did interviews and informed a bit of a travelogue sometimes.

00:02:03.580 But one of the hosts went to FBI headquarters in Washington, and in addition to talking about the FBI,

00:02:10.480 got an interview with J. Edgar Hoover.

00:02:12.440 And they even went to the firearms range together and shot the Thompson machine gun,

00:02:16.520 and I just thought that was terrific.

00:02:18.860 So it wasn't necessarily that you wanted to go in the military or be a cop.

00:02:22.200 You specifically wanted to be an FBI agent.

00:02:24.720 Yeah, I think so.

00:02:25.500 And my mom was – you know, I told her about having seen the show,

00:02:28.880 and she went out and bought me a book about the FBI,

00:02:30.800 and I'm reading about chasing gangsters and catching spies and, you know,

00:02:37.820 all the interesting things that the FBI did, which all was true.

00:02:43.820 And it really – I don't know, something about it clicked.

00:02:46.600 I mean, I have a friend that wanted to be a doctor since he was a young kid.

00:02:49.660 I have another friend that wanted to be a pilot.

00:02:51.480 They all followed their dreams, and I did too.

00:02:53.720 So something about it, you know, really was good for me.

00:02:57.160 Now, the life of an FBI agent, because when I was in the military, I was getting out.

00:03:01.800 I kind of went to the FBI – I went to the unit in L.A.

00:03:05.040 because to me it was kind of cool, and they actually paid pretty well as well.

00:03:08.900 I mean, if you become an FBI agent, you're not making 50 grand.

00:03:11.640 You're making a good $100,000, $200,000, depending on overtime and the time you put into it.

00:03:17.500 But was it the life that you expected it to be, or was it better?

00:03:22.260 Was it more curveballs?

00:03:24.220 Was it less exciting?

00:03:25.500 What was it like?

00:03:27.140 No, I think it was everything I expected and more.

00:03:31.200 I mean, there was such a wide range of work that you could do.

00:03:36.600 I mean, you would be chasing a bank robber one day, and the next day there's a kidnapping of some kid, you know,

00:03:44.140 and then you're, you know, arresting some fraudulent banker, you know.

00:03:48.680 I mean, it just was a wide range of activities that we did that I think were – provided pretty constant stimulation.

00:03:56.260 Obviously, a lot of paperwork and reporting and testimony in court and so forth, preparing for cases.

00:04:01.080 But I found it all to be enjoyable.

00:04:03.780 I never had a morning where I woke up and said, I don't feel like going to work today.

00:04:08.040 That's great to hear.

00:04:09.360 So I think you were talking about the life was what you expected it to be and even more because you had a lot of different things on what the life was like.

00:04:17.000 So, Gary, let's just say if we were in high school together, okay?

00:04:20.800 10th grade.

00:04:21.660 I'm more curious about 10th or 11th grade.

00:04:23.640 If we were in high school together, who was Gary Nessner in 10th grade or 11th grade?

00:04:29.280 I was a pretty happy kid.

00:04:31.080 I was raised near the beach in the Jacksonville area of Florida.

00:04:35.800 Atlantic Beach is where I was raised.

00:04:37.440 And I had a great family, great friends.

00:04:41.000 You know, in high school at that age, I was on the track in cross-country teams.

00:04:46.560 I, you know, would surf, which was kind of a new sport that was evolving.

00:04:53.340 And, you know, I lived two blocks from the ocean, so I'd carry my surfboard up there and go surf.

00:04:57.180 And, yeah, it was a great time to be raised as a kid and a time where, as a child, you had perhaps a great deal more freedom than kids do today or certainly than my kids have because there just wasn't the perception of any risk.

00:05:11.020 You know, the whole kind of community would pretty much call your parents if you were misbehaving.

00:05:15.740 And that certainly happened with me a couple of times.

00:05:17.720 But, yeah, it was a, you know, I think I was a pretty average kid.

00:05:22.740 I was an average student.

00:05:23.820 I was an athlete, but not a standout athlete, except for in running a bit.

00:05:29.740 But, you know, I think I was kind of down the middle, you know, in so many ways.

00:05:35.440 So, but did people know you were going to be an FBI agent?

00:05:37.600 It was kind of like a known thing or not really?

00:05:39.520 Like if I was...

00:05:40.460 My close friends certainly knew that was an aspirational goal.

00:05:44.760 And what later came to be the case, you know, I think I got this from my father a little bit.

00:05:50.860 I was always a bit of a natural mediator.

00:05:53.500 And in my family, you know, conflict was seen as a waste of energy and, you know, not a positive use of your time and energy.

00:06:05.180 So I was always uncomfortable when, say, friends would have a disagreement or a squabble.

00:06:10.260 And I always would, without even knowing what the term negotiation was, which didn't even exist then in the law enforcement context.

00:06:17.240 I mean, I certainly would always try to mediate those disagreements and get us back to a normal state of interaction.

00:06:26.180 And so I think that came into focus later on when I became an FBI agent and learned about this new emerging discipline in law enforcement.

00:06:37.260 And I found it very attractive.

00:06:39.700 Were you in a family where there was a lot of fights where you had to calm your mom and dad down or siblings down or not really?

00:06:44.180 It was a pretty calm household.

00:06:45.860 Pretty calm.

00:06:47.460 You know how sometimes they see comedians who are very good at what they do.

00:06:52.840 You go back and you study their life.

00:06:54.240 You can tell they came up with a lot of pressure.

00:06:56.220 So comedy was a form of them calming their lives on.

00:06:58.780 Sometimes mediators, personalities, the household is with a lot of friction where they have to naturally learn from a young age to get parents to be on the same page.

00:07:06.780 Having been in a business yourself for a while and been the chief of FBI crisis negotiation unit, I mean, you're not just one of them.

00:07:14.420 You're the chief of it.

00:07:15.320 But what have you seen are qualities of somebody who makes a good FBI negotiator?

00:07:21.780 And what are some qualities that there's no way this person can be a good negotiator?

00:07:26.280 Have you seen a trend over the years?

00:07:27.600 Yeah, I think there's a couple attributes that we see in successful negotiators.

00:07:34.760 And this doesn't apply simply to law enforcement negotiations, but in business and sales and management.

00:07:40.560 People are good listeners.

00:07:41.800 They have a lot of self-control.

00:07:43.520 They don't rise emotionally to a slight or an insult and go on the attack right away.

00:07:50.840 They ask questions to try to gather more information.

00:07:54.880 They are likable.

00:07:56.260 They're seen as trustworthy and genuine and sincere.

00:07:59.860 These are all the attributes.

00:08:01.380 And, you know, you mentioned earlier that you and others are in sales.

00:08:05.720 You know, I think you would agree with me that basically everything in life is based on relationship.

00:08:10.680 It just simply is.

00:08:12.040 Whether you're trying to sell a product or you're trying to deal with family crisis, argument with your neighbor, whatever it might be.

00:08:20.980 It's all about relationships.

00:08:22.960 And if you take the time and invest in building a positive relationship, number one, you can avoid problems.

00:08:28.860 But if they do surface, they being problems, you can diffuse those by the manner in which you react to it.

00:08:36.480 You know, it takes two to tango. 0.81

00:08:37.960 It takes two people to argue.

00:08:39.040 And if you're being the voice of reason and you're calm and your tone and demeanor are proper, you're far more likely to achieve the outcome that you want.

00:08:48.420 That makes sense.

00:08:49.260 Is there a certain protocol or approach to building rapport?

00:08:53.300 Like, have you noticed something that works very well?

00:08:55.280 I mean, obviously, you know, I've been in business for a while, so I've read a lot of the books on building rapport.

00:09:00.600 Is there anything unconventional that's worked for you over the years or is it the same thing that we've read about?

00:09:05.220 Well, I'm not sure what you've read or what you would consider conventional or not, but the bread and butter of negotiations is active listening skills.

00:09:14.260 And the premise being that for you to be successful in any sort of interaction, you need to get information and cooperation from somebody.

00:09:24.860 You don't want to spend the entire time telling them how you think and how you feel.

00:09:29.020 You already know that.

00:09:29.820 By actively listening, you set yourself up to, number one, get the information you need, number two, to project your sincere and genuine interest in what they have to say.

00:09:42.180 Those are powerful interpersonal communication skills.

00:09:45.980 We call them active listening because many people believe listening is a passive endeavor, and in reality, it's not.

00:09:52.520 Active listening is when you hear someone's emotion, you say, boy, you know, Patrick, you sound really confused by what's going on.

00:10:02.040 You know, and if that's an accurate reflection of how you feel, then I've scored some big points.

00:10:07.340 You are saying in your mind, yes, Gary understands me.

00:10:10.280 Or you may correct me and say, no, I'm not confused.

00:10:13.360 I'm disappointed.

00:10:15.040 Well, now I've learned something even more valuable to me.

00:10:18.500 You know, I've learned very specifically what it is that is driving your behavior.

00:10:25.980 Now, you know, we use paraphrasing.

00:10:29.860 We feed back in our own words.

00:10:31.700 Let me tell you what I think I've heard you say, and I want to get it right.

00:10:36.840 And if I do get it reasonably right, you're going to say, yes, you understand.

00:10:43.400 Because a lot of the people I used to deal with in my life feel as though no one has really listened to them.

00:10:48.980 No one has respected them.

00:10:50.940 No one has paid attention to their point of view.

00:10:53.760 So when I all of a sudden take the time and effort to sincerely and genuinely reflect back what I'm hearing from them and how they feel about it,

00:11:02.700 those are the powerful communication tools that create a relationship of trust, not necessarily a lifelong friendship.

00:11:10.380 But in the time frame we're talking about, it creates the opposite of confrontation.

00:11:17.460 It calms things down and helps us move forward in gaining cooperation.

00:11:23.820 Who's the most unreasonable person you negotiated with?

00:11:27.860 Well, that's a tough one.

00:11:29.460 I mean, there's a long list of characters in my life, but I guess the big topic would be David Koresh that we dealt with at Waco.

00:11:40.820 But it's not a full-time thing.

00:11:42.640 There were times where he was cooperative and he was down to earth and you could talk to him.

00:11:47.480 And then there would be other times where he was unreasonable and self-serving, narcissistic, very sinister and dark in his behavior.

00:11:56.780 So, you know, we always worked and strived to put him into that place where we were avoiding a combative engagement.

00:12:08.000 Did somebody, I mean, do you think other events in the past, like, you know, the scene with Weaver on what happens in Waco,

00:12:15.880 where you're going back and forth and you bring up Bo, so Bo has some kind of a trust after the shooter killed his wife.

00:12:21.980 You know, were there other experiences you had that led you to being prepared for negotiating with David Koresh?

00:12:29.060 And if yes, what were some of those?

00:12:30.680 Well, yeah, I worked a lot of cases before the 1993 Waco incident.

00:12:36.440 So, you know, the FBI's whole curriculum in terms of negotiations was, you know, it's part art and part science.

00:12:43.920 I mean, the science is to get people to cooperate, which is our goal.

00:12:49.040 We need to establish a relationship of trust.

00:12:52.300 So that's the scientific part.

00:12:53.900 We know the requirement and the goal.

00:12:56.460 The other part is a bit of art.

00:12:58.120 How do you do that?

00:12:58.940 How do you project your sincerity and honesty and genuine?

00:13:04.320 People like to work with people that they like and respect.

00:13:08.320 So, I mean, you get what you give.

00:13:11.420 So, you know, those are sort of the parameters.

00:13:14.700 So when we dealt with the David Koresh, we knew we'd responded to an incident that resulted in a terrible shootout between the ATF, a different agency,

00:13:24.820 and the Branch Davidians that Koresh led.

00:13:26.940 And we knew that there were dead people, there was wounded people, there was great emotion, there was, you know, a great bit of anger and frustration, one side versus the other.

00:13:39.740 We had to, we, the FBI, negotiation team, we had to come in and sort of separate ourselves and try to project that we were sort of a neutral, mediating entity, you know, that, hey, we're not the ATF, and we don't pretend to understand all the issues that are important to you.

00:13:56.880 But we want to learn, we want to see if we can work with you so that we can avoid further bloodshed, and we can get this resolved peacefully.

00:14:03.740 And that's what we did.

00:14:04.600 In the first half of the Waco incident, we got 35 people out, including 21 children, a fact that's often overlooked.

00:14:10.940 And I'm very proud of that.

00:14:13.340 It's unfortunate that things digressed, you know, after I left the scene.

00:14:19.120 But, yeah, that's kind of our goal.

00:14:22.340 So, yeah, I think we were well prepared to deal with David Koresh. 0.94

00:14:25.560 But we had other internal disagreements in the FBI that I'm sure we'll talk about in this interview and certainly discussed in my book.

00:14:33.120 I guess the biggest thing is, you know, prior to negotiating with David Koresh, who was, did you have a scenario like one that's, you know, like, for example, you talk to a Michael Jordan, or you talk to a delayed Kobe Bryant, or you talk to a Brady or some of these guys in sports, you'll say, so tell me the toughest opponent you ever faced.

00:14:55.260 And they'll say, well, you know, I hated playing against, you know, Joe Dumars, or I hated defending against this guy.

00:15:00.020 But who was the toughest person you faced off pre-David Koresh that you were both, you know, excited with the results that you got?

00:15:11.400 Or one where you said, I wish I wouldn't have taken that approach in a negotiation?

00:15:15.040 Were there any on both sides that you remember?

00:15:18.200 Yeah, there's two that stand out.

00:15:19.620 And I talk about both in my book.

00:15:21.260 One was a case in the 80s in Virginia, where a guy had kidnapped his former common law wife and child and from Connecticut and drove them to Virginia.

00:15:30.260 And we located them in a remote farmhouse.

00:15:34.720 And I ended up negotiating with him for some 10 hours.

00:15:38.580 Now, he was a very dangerous guy.

00:15:40.900 There were times where we communicated quite effectively.

00:15:44.280 But his controlling nature over his former ex-wife and child made him a high potential for lethality.

00:15:55.440 We were pretty certain he was going to kill her and possibly himself and the child.

00:15:59.980 Suicide often follows a homicidal act.

00:16:03.340 So it was a huge challenge connecting with him.

00:16:06.620 So he was one of the toughest cases I've ever worked with.

00:16:09.280 And in fact, we ended up, I had to negotiate him out of the house on his hopes of getting to a helicopter where an FBI marksman took his life.

00:16:17.980 The other case was also in the 80s.

00:16:20.360 It was on a train in Raleigh, North Carolina, an Amtrak train.

00:16:23.620 A guy was a drug runner and he was traveling with his sister and her two small children.

00:16:29.060 They were sort of his disguise.

00:16:30.820 And he ended up having an argument with her and shooting and killing her.

00:16:34.280 The train was, the cars were detached in Raleigh and negotiations set forward.

00:16:39.540 This was extremely challenging because he only spoke Spanish.

00:16:43.260 He was one of those who was almost afraid to communicate with us for fear that we would hear the fear in his voice, that we would psychologically get into his head or whatever it was.

00:16:53.800 And at the same time, we had children dying of dehydration, and one of them did die.

00:16:59.280 So we had that clock ticking against us on the one hand.

00:17:03.820 And on the other hand, we had this challenge of an effective communication channel.

00:17:09.640 You know, it ultimately worked out that he did surrender.

00:17:11.740 We saved one of the two children, but it was an extremely difficult case.

00:17:15.120 He subsequently died in prison.

00:17:17.520 But those two stand out, I think, in the area you talked about, Patrick, as being extraordinarily challenging ones that I dealt with, you know, well prior to Waco.

00:17:30.000 Did I overhear Clarksville, like there was something going on with Clarksville?

00:17:34.220 I heard the city Clarksville, and I was in Clarksville for two years.

00:17:37.420 Did you have something that happened in Clarksville?

00:17:39.000 Because it was in the Waco series where the character, you know, Michael Corbett says something in Clarksville.

00:17:45.540 No, I think that was a made up.

00:17:47.540 They were referring to another case.

00:17:50.720 I can't remember which one that was, but no, something did not happen in Clarksville.

00:17:54.880 Got it.

00:17:55.400 So with all these characters you've dealt with, how many total people would you say you've negotiated with in your career?

00:18:01.080 If you were to say the number of people you've negotiated with.

00:18:04.400 You know, I couldn't put a number on it.

00:18:06.000 It's not as big as you think, because two things.

00:18:11.500 You may find a police negotiator in a small jurisdiction that's done way more of these than I have.

00:18:17.640 And the typical one lasts a couple hours.

00:18:19.360 It's a guy that's drank too much.

00:18:21.140 He's having a fight with his wife and so forth and so on.

00:18:24.320 The FBI, we tended to work very long, challenging cases where we had an entire team.

00:18:30.200 And sometimes I would be the primary, but as often as not, I was leading the team and not necessarily personally speaking.

00:18:36.940 But, you know, there's certainly quite a few that I've done personally and, you know, gained a lot of experience through that.

00:18:43.760 But I think we uniquely worked long sieges that no one else has ever experienced.

00:18:49.400 Makes sense.

00:18:49.720 Because is the number 51 days with David Koresh?

00:18:52.820 Is that the number I've read?

00:18:54.040 That's correct.

00:18:55.340 51 days.

00:18:56.120 And we did, three years later, we did the Montana siege that was 85 days.

00:19:00.780 And then I was down in Peru when the Japanese ambassador's residence was taken over by MRTA terrorists.

00:19:08.040 That was 120 days.

00:19:09.860 And then we had worked several prison riots that have lasted at least a week and some right-wing militia standoffs, Republic of Texas.

00:19:17.480 And I mentioned the Freeman case.

00:19:18.920 So, the FBI probably has more major siege management in terms of a negotiation process than anyone in the world.

00:19:29.380 And so, we've learned quite a bit about it.

00:19:32.160 Gary, is there a similar trend amongst all these personalities?

00:19:35.360 All of these personalities?

00:19:36.400 It's like, when you go on, you know, if I go sit with a client and I get their financial needs analysis, say, how much money do you make?

00:19:43.480 What do you have in your 401k?

00:19:44.500 What do you have this?

00:19:45.600 Hey, this is how much you have in a CD and an annuity and some stocks and some, you know, retirement plans.

00:19:50.600 Do you see a commonality amongst all of these folks that you've negotiated with over the years?

00:19:56.420 One of the things we see in terms of personality is impulsivity.

00:20:00.060 A lot of these people respond to life events in a very impulsive way.

00:20:06.320 They have a low threshold for frustration and anger.

00:20:10.620 Often, they don't have very good coping skills.

00:20:14.120 They have what we call the double whammy. 0.96

00:20:16.980 You know, when most of us have a problem at work, we turn to our families for support.

00:20:21.540 If we have problems at home, we may turn to a trusted colleague at work for support.

00:20:27.460 A lot of the people we deal with have neither one of these.

00:20:30.480 They don't have a family support structure and they don't have a steady work environment.

00:20:34.540 So they haven't developed maybe the coping mechanisms that many of us have that would have helped them avoid the situation to begin with.

00:20:43.960 The other thing I think is a common misnomer that even law enforcement officials have.

00:20:49.960 I can't tell you how many times I've heard an official say to me, that son of a gun inside, he's manipulating us.

00:20:55.500 He knows exactly what he's doing.

00:20:57.180 He's being a real jerk.

00:20:58.800 In my experience, I usually say to them something like, well, that may be the case here.

00:21:03.640 I said, but my experience is these people have gotten themselves into a situation they have no idea how to get out of.

00:21:09.460 No idea.

00:21:11.060 And their decision, their default decision is no decision.

00:21:15.480 They don't want to come out and go to jail.

00:21:17.260 They don't want to stay in forever.

00:21:18.380 So they just don't do anything.

00:21:19.480 And we have to break through that.

00:21:22.560 So I think it's often a mistake that we attribute in them too much calculated activity.

00:21:28.960 I think David Koresh, as calculating as he could be, even fell into that category.

00:21:34.860 He basically didn't want to come out and go to jail the rest of his life.

00:21:38.580 And, you know, he would have loved us to go away, but he just made no decision.

00:21:43.540 They just stayed in there and refused to come out.

00:21:45.360 And it's something you have to recognize that people often are shooting from the hip and they don't have a clear plan.

00:21:54.440 That's very interesting because I remember in the scene of the movie where you're going out there and you're negotiating with Bo.

00:22:02.320 And there's a scene where you're going to Bo and saying, you know, people tend to do things based on fear.

00:22:08.500 If you can get to find out people's most highest thing they fear, then you can get motive.

00:22:15.520 And then you said his fear is this, Wood Weaver.

00:22:17.960 And then he said your fear is having to live with the rest of your life that if the other kid dies that you could have done something about it.

00:22:24.660 Is fear a big idea that you try to get as a negotiator?

00:22:29.740 No, I think that might have been overplayed a little bit.

00:22:32.660 It is a factor.

00:22:33.380 And it's funny, in real life, I was not at Ruby Ridge.

00:22:39.520 My partner was.

00:22:40.680 I was out of the country at the time.

00:22:42.340 But the actor that played me in the Waco six-part series was Michael Shannon, a great, great actor, a great guy.

00:22:49.280 And the producers and directors needed to get him into that first episode.

00:22:54.020 So they put me at a place I really wasn't.

00:22:56.800 Now, those things happened, but it wasn't me that did them.

00:23:00.360 And I wasn't happy about that, but that's the way it went.

00:23:03.440 But, yeah, I mean, I think I remember watching that scene, and they had a variation of it.

00:23:08.540 And I suggested to the director, I said, why don't we turn that fear thing into putting pressure on the guy that was playing Bo Grice to say, hey, how are you going to feel when you know you could have done something and you didn't?

00:23:23.160 That's what you should fear.

00:23:24.240 And they ended up incorporating that into the dialogue, and I think it was quite effective in that scene.

00:23:30.840 So that was a very effective scene when he talked about the fear and his negotiating, when Michael was doing it, the actor, when he was going through that with Bo.

00:23:40.280 So, but what are some of the most valuable currencies that you guys try to get, you know, in your world?

00:23:45.500 Meaning, if you're going against a hostage that you're negotiating, what are your currencies?

00:23:50.500 Meaning, is, because everything's, I'm assuming it's about leverage.

00:23:54.360 It's about listening to them and active listening, seeing what they want, building rapport, getting some kind of a trust, which David Koresh, you were one of the people that he trusted the most when he was going back and forth.

00:24:04.140 He actually seemed like he enjoyed talking to you based on some of the things you read about.

00:24:09.500 But what are some important currencies that you try to get?

00:24:11.940 I know there's the milk scene, I know there's the fear topic, you know, there is the patient side where you're saying 51 days is, you know, the Waco siege, 120 days was the one with Japan, 85 days, Montana siege.

00:24:27.980 What are some currencies you used to have leverage when you negotiate with the hostage?

00:24:32.920 I think the biggest goal that you try to achieve is a level of trust.

00:24:37.060 People will not surrender, they won't cooperate, they won't agree to something, unless they have a certain level of trust.

00:24:45.960 Now, it takes a little bit of time to build that, and there's various levels of trust.

00:24:52.100 But that's what we're really striving for.

00:24:55.080 The other thing I should say, based on your question, we really have to look at what negotiators do in kind of two categories.

00:25:01.600 One is an actual hostage taking, and you have to understand, this is more like business.

00:25:06.040 Because in a hostage taking, the person has a clear-cut goal in mind.

00:25:11.060 They want something they can't get on their own.

00:25:13.000 Maybe it's escape, maybe it's money, maybe it's a release from prison, whatever it might be.

00:25:18.240 They can't do it on their own, so they hold the hostage and threaten to harm the hostage unless the authorities give them what they want.

00:25:24.660 The good news on that story is they need us, the police, to do what they want.

00:25:31.020 So it sets up a scenario for quid pro quo bargaining.

00:25:34.840 Well, we can do this, but you have to do that.

00:25:37.520 And if you keep in mind that the person is there primarily to get their demands met and not to kill, that gives us a powerful advantage.

00:25:44.740 And usually with the passage of time, they hold the hostage, they feel initially empowered and in control.

00:25:50.840 And then when time passes and they don't get us to jump every time they snap their fingers, and we don't roll over and give them everything they want without them giving us something,

00:26:01.060 they finally come to the point of view of saying, well, I guess I'm not going to get what I want.

00:26:05.240 You know, there's an old story about a hijacking in New York, you know, way back in the 70s, and the guy wanted to fly to Europe.

00:26:13.500 And in part of his discussions with the negotiators, he said, I want, next time you come out here, bring me a hot cup of coffee with cream and two sugars.

00:26:21.520 You know, an hour later, the coffee comes out, and it's cold, and there's no sugar, and there's no cream.

00:26:26.960 And the guy surrenders about 20 minutes later.

00:26:29.260 And they said, well, what was it that made you surrender?

00:26:31.480 And he said, well, I figured if I couldn't get a decent cup of coffee, this other stuff wasn't going to work out.

00:26:37.220 You know, and it's sort of a humorous way to look at kind of how the expectations got lowered and the reality set in that, hey, you're not the big kahuna. 0.89

00:26:46.860 You don't just say you want something and it's going to happen.

00:26:49.640 You've got to go through us.

00:26:51.040 Now, those incidents that I just described, it's only about 10%, really, of what we do.

00:26:56.120 Most police officers will never work a legitimate hostage situation.

00:27:00.120 What they're working, 90%, is emotionally driven situations where the victim, not really a hostage, the victim and the person holding them, you know, have a preexisting relationship.

00:27:14.020 It's an employee-employer.

00:27:15.980 It's a boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife, you know, neighbor-neighbor, whatever it might be.

00:27:21.760 They have a history that is tense, problematic, and confrontational that has erupted into this event.

00:27:30.820 And those are the cases where the person really doesn't know how to get out of what they got into.

00:27:36.460 They just are expressing their emotions.

00:27:38.740 And our job in those cases is not so much to make a deal, but to lower their emotional levels, get them to a point where they're thinking a little more clearly and a little more rationally, and realizing that anything violent that they do is just self-defeating and self-destructive.

00:27:55.860 And we're pretty successful at those as well.

00:27:58.180 But I will tell you, when there is loss of life, it's in those situations, not a hostage situation.

00:28:04.080 Interesting. Interesting. How do you disconnect?

00:28:08.820 One time I brought the former director of CIA to my office, and I was running a Vistage meeting.

00:28:13.020 It's a business group that get together with different CEOs.

00:28:16.080 And, you know, he came and he was telling us different stories of what it was like to be a director of CIA.

00:28:21.240 And one of the questions everybody was asking is, how do you disconnect when you go home?

00:28:25.200 Because you're going through all these other stories.

00:28:27.200 How did you not let these stories psychologically get to you, or did they ever get to you where you were emotionally burned out?

00:28:34.080 Yes and yes. I mean, certainly, in my life, you have to understand that the FBI has 350 negotiators, and they're spread all over the United States.

00:28:46.240 And they reported to me, you know, through my supervisors and under me, but indirectly to me.

00:28:52.980 We also had, at any given time, FBI negotiators deployed overseas working kidnapping cases.

00:29:00.640 So whether it was from the West Coast, late at night their time, which was very early in the morning my time, or from the Philippines or from Columbia, South America, it was not at all unusual for me to get calls, you know, several times a week where I would have to get up in the middle of the night.

00:29:16.400 So in many respects, you couldn't let it go altogether, but I guess I developed some skills to compartmentalize it, and to deal with the problem as effectively as I could, and then try to get some sleep before I went back into work the next day, whatever it might be.

00:29:30.260 But it does have an effect on you.

00:29:32.420 So it's like a surgeon operating, you know, there's been a terrible accident, and they've got a family, and they've got children, and somebody's died, and somebody else has to have a leg amputated.

00:29:44.620 Well, don't tell me that the surgeon isn't impacted by that, but they compartmentalize it.

00:29:49.400 They put it aside and say, you know, I can't bring back that child that died.

00:29:53.340 So my energy devoted towards grieving for that is not going to help me save the other lives in the balance.

00:30:00.420 So I have to put that aside momentarily.

00:30:03.940 Now, when they get home later on and their wife says, how was your day, you know, maybe things come out and so forth.

00:30:10.480 But I would typically find, and my wife would do that for a while. 1.00

00:30:13.560 She said, you know, how'd that go today?

00:30:15.400 And sometimes I would say, you know, much to my discredit, I would say, you know, I just lived it for 12 hours.

00:30:21.820 I don't want to sit down and go through it again.

00:30:25.400 That's not really healthy, but sometimes you just, you can only deal with so much, you know.

00:30:30.120 But I found that I used to tell negotiators to think about the serenity prayer.

00:30:37.940 And if you're familiar with that, it basically says, you know, it'd grant you the power to understand what you can do, what you can't do.

00:30:45.820 Powerful.

00:30:46.380 And to really understand the difference.

00:30:48.640 And I kind of lived my career by that.

00:30:51.400 And, you know, in fact, the thing that negotiators are most impacted upon psychologically are, believe it or not, are suicides.

00:31:00.420 You know, when the bank robber kills a hostage, you know who to blame.

00:31:03.540 He's a jerk.

00:31:04.220 He's a criminal, a thug, an asshole, whatever.

00:31:06.660 But when you're talking to a nice lady whose husband's left her and she has no family and she's depressed and she kills herself while you're talking to her on the phone, it is natural for a negotiator to say, what could I have said differently?

00:31:22.280 Why couldn't I connect with her?

00:31:23.920 Because she was a good person.

00:31:25.020 She's not a bad criminal. 1.00

00:31:26.620 Those would be the cases that would be the most impactful.

00:31:29.660 So I would, getting involved in those cases, I would tell the negotiator, listen, you need to put yourself in the right frame of mind right now.

00:31:37.360 You're not, anything you say is not going to make this happen.

00:31:40.900 You can try to stop it from happening.

00:31:43.160 But if she decides to kill herself, that's her decision.

00:31:46.400 It's not because you said something wrong.

00:31:49.120 So be prepared for that.

00:31:50.920 Do the best you can to help this woman find a reason to live.

00:31:55.500 But if she doesn't, it's not your fault.

00:31:58.620 And the other thing we did in negotiations, you know, Patrick, that I think was so powerful, we always had a philosophy when we typically work as a team of negotiators, we don't have one person making all the decisions or deciding.

00:32:13.920 I might on this occasion be the person on the phone.

00:32:16.700 But there's five or six people saying, how do we all assess this situation?

00:32:20.800 How do we read it?

00:32:22.220 What do we agree upon should be the strategy moving forward and how we communicate with this person?

00:32:27.480 So, in other words, we rise and fall as a team.

00:32:30.280 We share the blame or we share the credit.

00:32:34.060 In the FBI, we never ran the negotiator in front of the camera and say, oh, Gary Nessner talked this person out.

00:32:39.440 No, our negotiation team did it.

00:32:41.880 So it's a success that we share.

00:32:44.240 And if it's a failure, you know, well, I'm not going to take it all on my shoulders because I was the voice, but the team agreed with what we were doing.

00:32:52.320 So those are, and I think that would apply in a lot of business context as well.

00:32:57.120 Very interesting.

00:32:58.040 So very interesting to mentally shape the FBI agents mindset, the 350 that reported to you through their managers or directors, supervisors, to go in.

00:33:07.700 If you're dealing with somebody that's suicidal, do your best.

00:33:10.520 But if they do kill themselves, you're going to have to live on and not have to rehash that in your mind over and over and over again.

00:33:16.960 Is that almost what I'm thinking based on what you just said?

00:33:19.320 No, that's exactly right.

00:33:21.660 And, you know, just by you saying it didn't mean that it didn't happen.

00:33:25.700 But, you know, that's what you do.

00:33:27.660 I mean, I have a very dear friend, even to this day, who is a police officer in the West Coast and he's a negotiator and he's a great one.

00:33:34.640 He's retired now, but he was negotiating with a guy in a hallway of a tenement building.

00:33:39.520 And all of a sudden the guy, you know, came out and started shooting at him.

00:33:43.480 And he, as a negotiator, ended up shooting and killing the guy.

00:33:47.660 And he was very upset about that.

00:33:49.460 Negotiators are used to getting people surrendered, not having to exercise deadly force.

00:33:53.840 But I spent, he called me up in the middle of the night.

00:33:55.980 We spent a long time talking that night and some other nights.

00:33:59.640 And, again, you know, you may have certain perceptions about police today.

00:34:04.480 There's a lot of conflict going on.

00:34:06.000 But here's a real caring guy whose life was devoted to getting people to peacefully surrender.

00:34:11.900 And he had to take a life.

00:34:13.260 And it really didn't sit well with him.

00:34:15.280 And not surprisingly.

00:34:17.100 So I had to give him basically that same pep talk.

00:34:19.820 He made the decision, not you.

00:34:21.620 You know, you only did what you had to do to protect yourself and your partner.

00:34:26.660 And some things are simply out of our control, you know.

00:34:31.920 And I think we all have to realize that.

00:34:34.140 And understanding your, you know, Clint Eastwood used to say in the movie, you know, everybody's got to know their limitations.

00:34:41.800 Legendary guy right there.

00:34:43.160 You know, in the business world, we say you can't help somebody who doesn't want to help themselves, right?

00:34:47.600 You'll say, oh, look, this is all we can do.

00:34:50.020 You can't help this person anymore than you can.

00:34:52.080 If they don't want to help themselves, there's nothing you can do for them.

00:34:54.760 Is there anybody you ever, is there a criteria of people you negotiated that whether there was a name you called or qualified this or was there a scoring system to say,

00:35:06.060 there is nothing you can say with this person for them to be reasonable?

00:35:11.120 Or is the mindset always, no, I think there is another angle.

00:35:15.160 How about let's try this angle?

00:35:16.620 Is there always like, let's try another angle?

00:35:18.820 Or are there some people that no matter what you say, they're not going to reason with you?

00:35:22.680 There are some of those people.

00:35:24.020 But what we try to do is when a negotiation team opens up communication, we immediately and continually begin to track the indicators of progress or the indicators of potential violence.

00:35:37.480 And there's a lot of ways we do that.

00:35:39.020 Is the level, the emotional level subsided or is it increased?

00:35:44.100 Is the use of aggressive language.

00:35:47.820 I mean, we'll actually track it and circle, you know, the number of words.

00:35:51.620 Well, you know, he said he was going to kill her seven times two hours ago and he only mentioned it once this hour.

00:35:57.280 So that's progress of a sort.

00:35:59.820 So we try to see, are we headed in the right path?

00:36:03.840 Sometimes we'll say we're going to switch negotiators because we're sort of at a stalemate.

00:36:08.620 Let's try a different voice, a different approach.

00:36:11.500 It's not that the other negotiator was bad, but, you know, maybe we need to play it up, change it up a little bit.

00:36:19.360 So we're constantly doing an evaluation, a re-evaluation, a reassessment between each phone call, and it's usually on the phone.

00:36:29.300 The team, before they do anything, before they go have a cigarette or get a lunch break or go to the bathroom, we analyze the last call before we do anything.

00:36:38.580 What did we hear?

00:36:39.460 What did everybody hear?

00:36:40.300 What did he sound like?

00:36:41.280 What's his tone?

00:36:41.960 What's his demeanor?

00:36:43.100 Any change in demands?

00:36:44.280 Oh, you heard that.

00:36:45.240 I didn't hear that.

00:36:45.980 That's important to know.

00:36:47.420 Let's listen to the recording of it again, and now I'll go through it.

00:36:50.920 And based on that, now what is our next call?

00:36:53.260 What do we anticipate him saying?

00:36:55.400 What's our response going to be?

00:36:57.320 It's very methodical and very planned out.

00:36:59.820 Then, and when we're ready for that next call, which might come in unexpectedly, then we can go take a break and stretch our legs because now we have a plan for moving forward.

00:37:11.220 If the guy calls up without warning, we've got up on a situation board what it is we're going to say.

00:37:16.140 What are the two or three key points we want to make in this next conversation?

00:37:21.680 And Gary, is there a lot of like, there's a handful of you guys that let you say it's a bigger case you're dealing with.

00:37:26.700 Is it a handful of you sitting there saying, so John, what was your biggest takeaway?

00:37:29.540 What do you think about what he said?

00:37:30.760 Did you notice what this is?

00:37:32.220 Is that kind of how it is?

00:37:33.260 Okay.

00:37:34.180 Absolutely.

00:37:34.800 Absolutely.

00:37:35.360 And, and, you know, as it came, you know, it was a challenge for me later in my career because I had done this so long and I held a certain position where I had to be careful.

00:37:46.260 If I spoke up too soon, here's what we need to do.

00:37:49.080 Then everybody's going to say, okay, this is what Gary wants to do.

00:37:51.240 We're going to do that.

00:37:52.240 So I had to really restrain myself and say, what, what do you think?

00:37:55.800 You know, does anybody have any ideas?

00:37:57.140 You know, you may know where we're going to go, but you have to make your team feel comfortable that their inputs could be listened to and appreciated and incorporated.

00:38:08.280 And frankly, there were some great ideas in some of the cases I worked that came up from very inexperienced to new negotiators.

00:38:15.300 And you say, I'm sure glad we had this chat because that's a great idea.

00:38:19.400 I didn't think of that.

00:38:21.040 Yeah, that's it.

00:38:21.640 So, so in sales, we call, when you say switching negotiating, we call that TO.

00:38:27.140 You turn it over.

00:38:27.860 When I used to work at Bally's, you'd go in there and I was the TO guy at the office.

00:38:31.480 So they would come in and, you know, Jennifer would say, or, you know, whoever, somebody would say, I can't make the sale.

00:38:38.340 But listen, I need somebody to do TO.

00:38:40.900 Then we'd send somebody else in there to take a different angle.

00:38:43.300 And many times you would close the deal because they're hearing it from a different person that it can connect with.

00:38:47.580 That's very interesting when you're saying that.

00:38:48.700 And so if you don't mind, let's just get right into the whole Waco situation with David Koresh, because a part of what you just said took me back to the part in the episode where I think Steve Schneider is talking to you on the phone.

00:39:01.780 And he says, look, I have my own opinion on a personal level, but dot, dot, dot.

00:39:08.140 And then you got off and you told him, said, did you hear how he said personal level?

00:39:11.480 That was your opportunity to go in to have two different personalities to get Steve in his mind because he was getting some control.

00:39:17.420 But prior to going into that, let's just go through the whole experience here.

00:39:22.760 When did you get a call when they said, hey, Gary, we need your help on this case taking place in Waco, Texas?

00:39:29.540 And how was that approach when you heard it?

00:39:31.200 Was it a call?

00:39:31.780 Was it a how did that happen?

00:39:34.300 Yeah, it happened on February 28th of 1993.

00:39:37.160 And it was a Sunday.

00:39:38.440 And I was actually out at a hardware store with my family and my wife and I and our three kids.

00:39:44.020 And back then we didn't have cell phones in the FBI.

00:39:48.800 We had beepers and my beeper went off and I knew it was my my boss's number.

00:39:54.540 So I went to a phone booth at a Burger King across the street and I called him up and he said, hey, it's I think this was early afternoon.

00:40:03.940 There'd been a shootout in Waco and he gave me the basic parameters of what happened.

00:40:08.700 And he said, I need you to get to the airport where we kept some FBI planes and you need to fly out there right away.

00:40:17.080 So we even had in my unit, we had what we call ready bags.

00:40:20.260 I mean, we already we carry a bag around in our cars that had all our gear.

00:40:24.420 Now, I was in the family sedan.

00:40:26.080 I wasn't driving an FBI car to the hardware store in the weekend.

00:40:29.620 So I had to go home, drop off the family, get my FBI car and my gear and head to the airport.

00:40:35.040 And I ended up flying out there.

00:40:37.460 It always takes longer than you think.

00:40:39.060 I ended up getting there that evening on site and assessing the situation and moving forward.

00:40:45.840 Gary, from the day you got there on site, how long were you there for before you went back home?

00:40:50.940 I was there 26 days.

00:40:52.640 Got it.

00:40:52.980 So when you got that call on a Sunday, I think it's February 28, 1993, and you went across the street to the Burger King, when you got that call, did you already know what was going on there or you had no idea?

00:41:04.840 This was like a sudden news and event that took place.

00:41:07.220 Yeah, it was definitely sudden.

00:41:08.940 I mean, I just knew that it was a religious cult and that the ATF had attempted a raid to arrest the leader and search the premises for illegally converted weapons and that a shootout had unfolded and there was a loss of life on both sides.

00:41:30.240 And, you know, there was a ceasefire was being attempted or had already been attempted.

00:41:36.620 I can't remember the sequence.

00:41:38.940 And I needed to get out there and bring some of my negotiators from around the country and be prepared to take over negotiations.

00:41:45.520 Now, when you went there, who was the what you got briefing from who?

00:41:49.240 Like who is giving you briefing?

00:41:51.060 Are they saying here's what the case is?

00:41:52.580 Here's what just happened.

00:41:53.380 This is what's going on.

00:41:54.240 And how are you doing your own due diligence?

00:41:56.520 Yeah, my boss was giving me a briefing.

00:41:58.640 Now, when I flew out on the airplane, an FBI plane, you know, additional information had come in and was shared with me.

00:42:08.940 But, you know, the truth be told, when I was feet on the ground in Waco, I mean, what I knew about the branch Davidians and what had occurred was pretty basic.

00:42:19.840 You know, it normally takes a while to to get all that intelligence.

00:42:23.960 And it's hard to do that when you're in a travel mode.

00:42:26.640 But when I first got there, I sat down with the ATF people.

00:42:30.260 There was ongoing negotiations already with Koresh.

00:42:32.700 And there was an FBI colleague of mine there.

00:42:36.380 And there was a sheriff's department negotiator.

00:42:38.520 So I sat down immediately with them and tried to ask the questions and gather the information that would prove essential to me.

00:42:46.760 From the outside, for those of us that we watch a lot of movies, you know, movies have done a very good job showing that a lot of these units and, you know, different organizations, they don't do well together, working together.

00:42:57.900 Is there any kind of animosity between the FBI and the ATF or any of those organizations?

00:43:03.120 Or do you guys pretty much work well together?

00:43:05.000 Because it seems like there's a lot of power trips going on.

00:43:07.680 No, we're in charge.

00:43:08.480 No, we're doing this.

00:43:09.140 I think there's always been a certain level of animosity between the various federal agencies.

00:43:18.080 I mean, the United States decided not to have a model with one big national police force.

00:43:22.700 So we have a lot of agencies.

00:43:24.660 And, you know, so whether it's, you know, the DEA works only drugs, but the FBI works some high level drug things.

00:43:32.220 ATF works, you know, mostly it says alcohol, tobacco and farms, but it's mostly farms violations.

00:43:37.980 And, you know, if there's a bombing, they work that, but the FBI works the bombing as well.

00:43:43.380 So there's always some levels of cooperation, often based on relationships that have been built with other people from the other agency.

00:43:50.420 And then there's some conflicts and different methodology.

00:43:54.160 You know, and that's just part of the equation.

00:43:57.400 But, you know, I knew when I got out there, my job wasn't to say, well, you know, ATF screwed this up.

00:44:04.180 And my job was to say, how do we, you know, make sure no further violence breaks out?

00:44:11.080 And how do we gain the cooperation of the Davidians to come out? 0.95

00:44:14.740 And one of those strategies, which I think goes to a sense to your question, is we purposely had to distance ourselves from ATF.

00:44:22.640 Now, when I first spoke to Koresh that night, I told the ATF people who were gathered in a room where the negotiations were taken.

00:44:30.800 I said, listen, I'm going to say some things to Koresh about we are not the ATF.

00:44:35.900 Don't interpret that as a criticism of you.

00:44:38.600 I'm trying to project that we are now in here as somebody different who's going to be objective and neutral and get this resolved.

00:44:45.840 So I have to separate myself from you.

00:44:48.040 And if you take that as a criticism, then maybe you want to leave because that's the way I have to approach this.

00:44:53.980 And they said they understood.

00:44:55.520 And I hope they did.

00:44:56.380 I'm not sure that all of them did.

00:44:57.680 But, you know, you got to understand there was a lot of anger.

00:45:01.180 The ATF people that I ran into that, that when I arrived, looked like they'd just come off a battlefield.

00:45:07.560 I mean, some of them still had blood on their clothes and from taking care of wounded comrades, they almost look shell-shocked, for lack of a better term.

00:45:17.300 Now, by the way, why do they call themselves ATF?

00:45:20.160 I mean, don't they just need to change to F?

00:45:21.680 I know they got started in 1972.

00:45:23.880 What alcohol and tobacco, you know what I'm saying?

00:45:26.800 Yeah, I mean, that's a good point.

00:45:29.500 It's officially the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

00:45:32.560 And, you know, I think they're a holdover from the old revenuers.

00:45:37.480 It's a Treasury Department.

00:45:39.180 And so their early job was to make sure that people were complying with alcohol laws and not avoiding federal tax.

00:45:48.580 And same thing with tobacco. 0.84

00:45:51.480 You know, people were illegally transporting cigarettes across state lines and all that stuff.

00:45:56.320 And they have regulatory people that do that now more than law enforcement people.

00:46:00.040 But their survival has basically, in the last, you know, 20 or 30 years, has depended on their investigations of firearms violations.

00:46:08.340 Yeah, it's a weird name to put ATF because I don't think they're going to have anything to do with that the last, you know, like you said, couple of 22 decades.

00:46:16.440 But going back to you getting there.

00:46:17.920 So you get there.

00:46:19.040 You're telling the ATF guys, look, you guys had a bad start.

00:46:22.000 I can't say I'm ATF.

00:46:23.100 I'm going to say, look, we've not been here.

00:46:24.280 We just showed up.

00:46:24.960 We're FBI.

00:46:25.300 And if I don't come from that approach, the guy's not going to have any kind of a trust and credibility with me.

00:46:31.140 I almost have to say, look, they screwed up, but I'm not ATF.

00:46:33.860 I'm FBI.

00:46:34.800 So then you build some kind of trust with Koresh. 0.88

00:46:39.300 But at that point, had you already spoken to Robert Rodriguez from ATF or not yet?

00:46:44.620 No, I hadn't.

00:46:46.260 I'm not sure if I ever spoke to Robert Rodriguez.

00:46:48.420 I mean, I was getting information that he reported through others, but I don't know that I had a personal conversation with him.

00:46:54.920 I may have.

00:46:55.880 I just don't remember, to be honest with you.

00:46:58.000 But to clarify a little bit of what you said, I never got into the ATF screwed up.

00:47:02.780 I just said we are a different agency.

00:47:06.300 What we do is we're going to do a thorough investigation.

00:47:09.940 You're saying that they shot first.

00:47:11.720 You're saying that what they do is inappropriate.

00:47:14.020 Our investigation will come to the truth and you'll get your day in court.

00:47:18.700 So that's what I was trying to project.

00:47:20.620 Not so much a harsh criticism of them, but a projection of a neutral examination so that they got a fair hearing.

00:47:29.140 Makes sense.

00:47:29.640 So first time you spoke to David, what did it seem like and how long was that conversation?

00:47:35.020 You know, I don't know.

00:47:36.800 Maybe a half an hour, the first conversation, maybe a bit longer.

00:47:40.420 But he had been wounded that day and was in some discomfort.

00:47:48.400 A bullet had creased his hand, just as shown in the TV show.

00:47:52.880 It went on his wrist, under his thumb.

00:47:55.860 And then it went on through his side, in and out.

00:47:59.180 So quite a painful wound.

00:48:01.640 And, you know, so he was uncomfortable.

00:48:05.480 But, you know, he had calmed down a bit by the time I got there.

00:48:11.640 And I would characterize our talk as promising, encouraging.

00:48:16.980 He didn't yell and scream at me.

00:48:18.300 He did get angry when he mentioned ATF.

00:48:21.680 And why did they do that?

00:48:23.060 Why didn't they arrest me on the street?

00:48:24.880 Why did they have to come in here with da-da-da-da-da-da? 1.00

00:48:26.860 I didn't try to defend or condemn them.

00:48:30.020 I just moved it back to, well, we're here now, David.

00:48:32.640 And, you know, we're the FBI.

00:48:34.420 We're different.

00:48:34.960 We want to work with you and get this resolved.

00:48:37.360 The most important thing is you and no one else in your family gets hard.

00:48:40.600 That's the general approach we took, Patrick.

00:48:43.800 By the way, have you watched the entire series yourself?

00:48:46.380 Oh, yeah.

00:48:46.880 You know, I was involved in – I was on set for some of it.

00:48:49.940 My book was one of the two books they used to develop.

00:48:54.220 They wanted to project the view from inside looking out, and they bought David Thibodeau's book for that.

00:49:00.960 He was one of the survivors.

00:49:02.080 And they bought my book for a look of what the authorities were looking at, looking in.

00:49:08.080 I think the part about the FBI, despite the arguments and the disagreements that were projected, which were essentially, unfortunately, correct, I think is fairly realistic, and I stand by it.

00:49:18.180 And I think where the producer-director has failed, I think they painted a little bit too positive a picture of David Koresh.

00:49:27.100 He was too sympathetic of a character in the TV show.

00:49:31.000 In reality, he was a lot more sinister, manipulative, dark, self-serving.

00:49:36.560 You've got to understand, he was really a total demagogue inside there, and people did whatever he said.

00:49:40.980 It's not like, oh, I'm the leader.

00:49:42.840 It's like, he's the god.

00:49:44.800 He's the prophet.

00:49:46.380 And people like that can be pretty challenging to deal with.

00:49:51.980 So I think the directors were trying to show that he had this charismatic personality that attracted people to him.

00:50:00.660 And I think they did a good job on that.

00:50:02.440 I just don't think they sufficiently showed his more challenging side.

00:50:10.280 They didn't show his more challenging side.

00:50:12.100 Yeah, because when I watched the interview, when you guys had the cast, I think you were there.

00:50:16.660 David was there.

00:50:17.980 Michael Shannon was there.

00:50:19.700 You had a couple of the actors that were there that, you know, played Koresh.

00:50:25.580 And David was still defending.

00:50:29.720 Yeah.

00:50:29.940 And he was very much like, look, you know, to me, we weren't doing anything wrong, you know?

00:50:35.520 Yeah.

00:50:35.840 And we were just, I don't know why the ATF did what they did.

00:50:39.780 You know, we didn't have any gunshots.

00:50:41.380 It came from the outside.

00:50:42.340 You can tell he seemed very convincing.

00:50:45.220 And he even said, I'm not part of the branch of Davidian.

00:50:47.380 I just went there to stay there.

00:50:48.520 I was not somebody that was one of his devout followers.

00:50:51.220 So he made the argument where people said, well, you know, this David guy, did they really do anything wrong?

00:50:57.680 I don't think they did anything wrong for them to be attacked the way they did.

00:51:00.620 So it was interesting to see David's angle as well.

00:51:04.140 Yeah.

00:51:04.660 You know, I had never met or spoken with David before.

00:51:08.760 We met on the set.

00:51:09.800 A lot of people were interested to see how we would get along.

00:51:12.140 We actually got along quite well.

00:51:13.660 There are some key areas we disagree over.

00:51:17.060 And that's fine.

00:51:18.080 I mean, he just called me a few weeks ago.

00:51:19.720 We had a very cordial chat.

00:51:20.900 I actually like David.

00:51:23.600 You know, I think one of the problems I have, his book shows his perspective.

00:51:29.200 But he wasn't in with David Koresh when we were negotiating with him.

00:51:32.680 He really didn't see things that we saw from the negotiation side.

00:51:37.820 And, you know, ATF did have a legitimate reason to investigate him.

00:51:41.800 You can question whether they should have conducted the raid the way they did.

00:51:45.480 But they were certainly illegally modifying weapons in violation of law.

00:51:50.380 They had, you know, they had grenades.

00:51:51.800 They turned semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons.

00:51:55.660 And all that's illegal.

00:51:56.800 Did it, what was a dynamic raid the appropriate way to handle that?

00:52:01.760 I mean, we can debate that.

00:52:03.340 We probably wouldn't have done it that way in the FBI.

00:52:06.300 But they certainly had the legal basis to do it.

00:52:09.680 So, I mean, again, I think David has a different perspective.

00:52:13.480 And that was sort of the strong quality of the TV show was trying to show both sides.

00:52:18.380 It's just, it's a very difficult thing to do.

00:52:20.220 And I think they ended up skewing it a little bit too much towards David Thibodeau's perspective,

00:52:26.300 which I would argue may not be as expansive as it should have been to get a better sense

00:52:32.120 of Koresh's controlling sinister aspects.

00:52:36.140 Do you have any idea why they did that?

00:52:38.320 Well, again, there's not a lot.

00:52:39.800 I mean, I think he's one of the very few survivors that wrote a book about his experience.

00:52:44.240 And they came upon his book several years before they reached out to me.

00:52:49.880 They were looking at another project.

00:52:51.960 And I think they were really moved by his story.

00:52:56.640 And then they contacted me and they said, oh, well, there's a different side of this as well.

00:53:00.740 And this is a good way to put together a project that shows both sides.

00:53:04.800 And the Dowdle brothers, who were the producer directors, I mean, they're great guys.

00:53:09.840 I really like them.

00:53:11.920 They're both very professional.

00:53:13.200 But I do think they were perhaps overly swayed a bit by Thibodeau's viewpoint.

00:53:19.220 I'm glad they got a hold of you.

00:53:20.480 That's for sure that they got a hold of you.

00:53:22.440 Let me ask you this.

00:53:23.800 So if you were to say total amount of hours you spoke to David, how many hours, not David Thibodeau,

00:53:29.560 David Koresh, how many total hours would you say you spoke to him?

00:53:32.560 You're talking about me or the FBI?

00:53:33.860 You, yourself.

00:53:36.260 I don't know, 12, 14.

00:53:39.320 Oh, my gosh.

00:53:40.080 That's a lot of hours.

00:53:41.220 That's a lot of hours.

00:53:43.520 It was just, and that was at the beginning.

00:53:45.640 You know, once my team arrives, I'm the chief negotiator for all the FBI.

00:53:49.540 It's not my job to, you know, make the coffee, get on the phone and do everything.

00:53:54.880 My job is to lead the team, to organize the team, to set up the shifts, to make sure we're

00:53:59.640 gathering the intelligence, to devise the strategy and to make sure the team's implementing the

00:54:03.820 strategy, to do the analysis.

00:54:05.560 So, you know, it's not my job at that point any time.

00:54:10.320 It's like, you know, when the Air Force sends planes to go bomb someplace, the general in

00:54:15.500 charge of the Air Force doesn't get in the plane, you know?

00:54:17.760 It makes sense.

00:54:18.620 Yeah.

00:54:19.260 But is it fair to say, but still, 12 to 14 hours, it's like being on the front line.

00:54:24.240 So it's not like you were back at the barracks telling everybody what to do.

00:54:27.200 You were still a front line guy.

00:54:28.880 Oh, yeah.

00:54:29.360 You were sitting with these guys.

00:54:30.340 So 12 to 14 hours was your conversations with them, but you can pretty much say you've

00:54:35.680 listened to every other conversation any of your agents have with them.

00:54:39.100 So you've been involved 100% of conversations.

00:54:41.900 No, absolutely.

00:54:42.420 And, you know, we set up eventually, when the FBI took command of the incident, we set

00:54:48.080 up 12-hour shifts for negotiators.

00:54:51.560 So, and we do that.

00:54:53.640 It sounds like a long shift, but we want, it's the old parlor game where one person tells

00:54:58.200 a secret to another, tells a secret to another, and at the end, it's all messed up.

00:55:02.040 So we wanted the people that you relieved to be the people that relieved you.

00:55:07.380 So there's no confusion.

00:55:10.260 You know, you tell me what you did on your shift, I embrace it, incorporate it into what

00:55:14.580 I'm going to do.

00:55:15.520 And then when you come back, I'm going to do the same for you.

00:55:18.600 And it minimizes miscommunication.

00:55:21.440 As the overall leader, I would split my time between both shifts to also be a bridge to

00:55:28.040 make sure that the oncoming shift doesn't do something that contradicts and make sure

00:55:33.760 it's consistent with what we did before.

00:55:35.340 So I was working 18-hour days or 20-hour days, you know.

00:55:39.320 Yeah, it wears you out.

00:55:41.800 But, you know, it's what you lose in fatigue, you gain in consistency.

00:55:47.820 I bet.

00:55:48.420 And then you have more leverage to be able to, how many total negotiators did you have there?

00:55:52.740 You know, at one time, we probably had, you know, 12 to 14 negotiators, you know, split

00:56:01.420 between two shifts.

00:56:02.440 Now, a lot of those people left after three weeks and would be replaced by somebody else

00:56:07.460 for that whole fatigue issue.

00:56:09.000 So overall, there's probably 40 negotiators that, I'm just guessing, I don't have the

00:56:13.320 number off the top of my head.

00:56:14.980 Not every one, in fact, only a small percentage actually spoke to the Davidians.

00:56:19.580 Because there's a lot of functions on the team.

00:56:22.600 You're maintaining a log, you keep a situation board, you're doing progress reports to send

00:56:28.460 back the headquarters, you're interviewing family and relatives.

00:56:31.660 So there's a myriad of tasks that a negotiation team performs that the public may not appreciate.

00:56:37.520 In fact, when the children were released that came out, each time they came out, a negotiator

00:56:42.740 would pick them up and talk to them and, you know, find out what we could through that,

00:56:47.340 bring them back.

00:56:48.140 We put the child in the negotiation room, we'd call back in and we'd talk to their parents.

00:56:52.440 Hey, we picked up little Johnny, they're fine.

00:56:54.980 We want to make sure you know they're fine.

00:56:56.540 So here they are on the phone, you know, talk to them.

00:56:59.080 There's a lot of good things we did in the negotiations that unfortunately, has become

00:57:03.600 underappreciated because of the way the thing ended.

00:57:05.520 Oh, no doubt about it.

00:57:07.140 We'll get to that here in a minute.

00:57:08.380 But from the 12 to 14 hours of you speaking with David, did you get a feeling that this

00:57:12.800 guy is a true believer or a narcissistic guy, a psychopath, a, you know, bipolar?

00:57:21.080 What feeling did you get from speaking to him?

00:57:23.640 Or was he 100% true believer in what he was saying?

00:57:26.500 Because that's the biggest thing for me.

00:57:28.080 Did he really believe he was the lamb?

00:57:31.060 That's a question that I don't have a clear answer for.

00:57:34.420 Or, um, because, you know, obviously, um, there were parts of him that were down to earth

00:57:41.520 and even humorous sometimes you could talk to him, but when you got into a thin sliver

00:57:46.500 of his personality that was focused on religion, then he had really moved up in, in the branch

00:57:53.260 Davidians become its prophets by memorizing almost the entire Bible and be able to string 0.99

00:57:58.500 together various verses.

00:58:00.320 Now, a lot of that might sound nonsensical to most people, but his followers really truly

00:58:05.780 believed he had a unique interpretation and was a prophet.

00:58:09.240 Um, how much of it did he really believe or how much of it became his vehicle for controlling

00:58:14.840 other people?

00:58:15.760 I'm still not sure on.

00:58:17.460 David Thibodeau would tell you that this guy was the real deal.

00:58:20.060 Well, I'm not so convinced that, um, his primary motive, I mean, for example, everybody lived

00:58:26.740 a very Spartan life in there.

00:58:28.020 I mean, they, they didn't have running water.

00:58:29.780 They didn't have electricity.

00:58:30.780 They had to take buckets for their human waste out and bury it. 0.99

00:58:34.960 But he lived in air conditioning and had conveniences.

00:58:38.020 And, you know, he used to call himself the sinful Messiah.

00:58:42.720 Don't do what I do.

00:58:43.920 Do what I say.

00:58:44.660 And, you know, kind of the classic manipulating, controlling, um, uh, thing that we tend to see

00:58:51.800 with cult leaders.

00:58:52.820 So how much did he really believe or how much it just became convenient for him to project

00:58:59.140 that he believed?

00:58:59.960 I don't know.

00:59:01.040 You know, I certainly didn't characterize him as having a diagnosable mental health disorder.

00:59:06.780 I mean, he certainly was narcissistic and perhaps malignantly narcissistic, but, but I didn't

00:59:12.780 find him to be necessarily bipolar or schizophrenic, you know, uh, anything like that.

00:59:19.840 I, I ask because sometimes when you talk to somebody, motives, uh, will show up, you know,

00:59:24.140 when you're talking to somebody and you'll know if somebody is a true believer where they can't

00:59:28.100 help or talk about, you know, a certain topic, whatever that topic, maybe in this case being,

00:59:33.060 you know, the seven seals and he's revealing this from revelations and Psalms to, or, you

00:59:39.480 know, every area that he would go to, I've done negotiations behind closed doors where

00:59:44.020 a guy's coming to me and saying, I really want to just do the right thing for the client.

00:59:48.680 It's just about the client.

00:59:50.200 And then, you know, you kind of try to play along and say, yeah, but if you do this, you'll

00:59:54.700 get $50,000 more commission.

00:59:56.580 And then you realize they're like, Oh really?

00:59:58.800 Yeah.

00:59:59.020 Then you realize maybe it's not really about the client.

01:00:01.340 Maybe it's just about the pocketbook.

01:00:02.740 You just showed a motive right there.

01:00:04.680 Did you have any of those situations with them when you spoke to him?

01:00:09.820 Well, yeah.

01:00:11.000 I mean, not necessarily.

01:00:13.360 I mean, I think his motive was a guy of very, uh, low means, you know, gravitates to this

01:00:21.780 religious order.

01:00:23.220 Um, he was not a good student.

01:00:25.240 He was dyslexic, came from a very troubled background, had a lot of problems in his youth,

01:00:30.760 but he, he found something that gave him power and control and promoted his ego and he took

01:00:40.300 it for all it was worth.

01:00:41.940 Um, so it's hard to say how much of that was the motivation, how much true believe in, I'll

01:00:47.180 give you one little story.

01:00:48.040 And there's quite a few of them, by the way, but one night he asked the negotiators, Hey,

01:00:52.300 by the way, where are you guys getting dinner?

01:00:55.020 And the negotiator said, well, we're going to the local hamburger place, the Whataburger.

01:00:59.260 And it's the only place to open this time of night.

01:01:01.220 And he said, Oh my God, the meat's terrible at Whataburger.

01:01:05.060 He said, you know, if it turns out that I am the son of God, the world's going to find

01:01:09.040 out about the meat at Whataburger.

01:01:11.520 Now, does that sound like something a guy that truly believed he was the son of God would

01:01:16.160 say?

01:01:16.500 I don't think so.

01:01:17.760 You know, and it was, it was sort of flippant and self-deprecating in a way.

01:01:22.160 And he laughed about it, you know, but I don't think somebody that really thought they

01:01:27.040 had this divine role would say something like that.

01:01:31.120 And there's other examples of it as well.

01:01:33.540 What is the most random thing he ever told you on the phone where you were flabbergasted?

01:01:38.640 Oh boy, that's a, I don't know.

01:01:42.400 I'd have to think about that.

01:01:43.600 There was a lot of things that he said that surprised us, but I can't come up with a good

01:01:51.300 example on that right now, Patrick, I'm sorry.

01:01:53.200 But, you know, he was a constant.

01:01:55.980 So our biggest challenge was when he would break off communication with us for long periods

01:02:01.080 of time, and we had to go through Steve Snyder, his deputy.

01:02:04.880 We had a great relationship starting with Steve Snyder, but the problem was we quickly

01:02:09.820 determined that no one inside, absolutely no one made any decisions other than David Koresh.

01:02:15.640 So when he was angry at us or didn't feel like talking, we got nothing done, you know, so

01:02:23.440 we could have a great conversation with Steve, but it was unlikely that that was going to lead

01:02:28.420 to any release of people unless we got Koresh involved.

01:02:32.900 How does a theology professor at University of Hawaii, who's married, he studies theology for

01:02:41.820 living, how does he hear a message from this guy talking about the seven seals, convince

01:02:48.760 him to follow him and allow his wife, Judy, to have his baby?

01:02:52.840 How the hell does that happen?

01:02:55.360 How did Bernie Madoff get very successful business people to give him their money?

01:03:01.040 I mean, you know, people who are inclined to hear a certain message, you know, they're hearing

01:03:07.860 what they want to hear and they do what they want.

01:03:10.440 A lot of people that get drawn into these kinds of cults, organizations, are people who

01:03:16.760 have questions in their life.

01:03:17.920 They have things they want to know, and someone like this provides answers, provides a nurturing

01:03:25.060 family support structure for them, and they get pulled into it.

01:03:29.540 And they begin to accept without question what is being said.

01:03:34.500 And, you know, opposition is not encouraged or tolerated.

01:03:38.840 And if you don't follow the party line that the leader wants, in this case Koresh, you get 0.86

01:03:43.400 booted out.

01:03:44.240 You're not welcome.

01:03:45.400 So it's a very insular thinking.

01:03:48.760 And, you know, we see it on our political front as well.

01:03:50.840 You know, people that hold some obscure beliefs, they're really not open to hearing another point

01:03:55.900 of view or another perspective.

01:03:57.040 How do you do that, by the way, just out of curiosity?

01:04:01.280 Like, do you ever do the same methods that you have of trying to persuade somebody of

01:04:06.880 thinking about politics?

01:04:07.980 Because obviously today we're in shambles when it comes on to politics, the level of

01:04:11.040 divisions at the highest level, you know, whether it's the protesting, the rioting, whether

01:04:15.140 it's the coronavirus.

01:04:16.700 How do you do that?

01:04:17.740 Or is it easier to negotiate with people like David than it is to negotiate with people that

01:04:22.180 have their mindset on politics?

01:04:24.840 Neither one of them is easier.

01:04:26.820 And whether we're talking about this strong political ideology or religious ideology,

01:04:32.300 if you look at someone's personality as a pie chart, and you'll find a percentage, a

01:04:38.340 slice of that pie, I don't know how much it is, 10%, 20%, 30%, whatever, that is the core

01:04:44.360 of their belief system.

01:04:45.960 As long as you are focused on that slice of pie, you are probably going to be unsuccessful

01:04:53.900 in getting them to change their mind.

01:04:56.980 So we as negotiators try to move to that 70%, 80% of the pie or whatever it might be that

01:05:03.480 doesn't incorporate that.

01:05:04.580 I'll give an example.

01:05:05.260 You could get a room of 50 pro-life and 50 pro-choice people, and you could sit them there

01:05:11.400 and they could talk all day long.

01:05:13.280 And at the end of the day, you'd have 50 pro-life and 50 pro-choice.

01:05:16.980 Do you believe that?

01:05:18.420 I do believe that, yeah.

01:05:19.540 I mean, I believe that nothing will change at the end.

01:05:22.260 I believe it's highly unlikely for anybody to make that change.

01:05:27.320 I would never say it's impossible.

01:05:29.860 But, you know, so we learned pretty quickly, we got to get David, we purposely didn't talk

01:05:35.060 about his ideology any more than we had to.

01:05:38.240 Now, we were criticized, we the FBI, by some religious scholars who said, well, if you just

01:05:42.080 called me in, I would have convinced him that his interpretation of the seven seals was faulty.

01:05:46.780 Well, that's a fool's game.

01:05:48.080 I mean, that's, you know, it's like talking to Jesse Ventura.

01:05:52.780 You know, he said, well, you know, the U.S. government blew up the World Trade Center.

01:05:56.760 Okay, well, no matter what logical explanations you give him or counter arguments, it doesn't

01:06:02.120 matter.

01:06:02.480 He's going to believe what he wants to believe.

01:06:03.860 So you realize pretty quickly, if I want a good conversation with him, I got to move it

01:06:08.140 off of this topic into another area.

01:06:10.300 That may be a bad example, but I think you follow what I'm saying.

01:06:14.340 Of course.

01:06:15.320 You know, we dealt with some years later, and I think it was 96, I dealt with the Republic 1.00

01:06:20.880 of Texas siege in Fort Davis, Texas, which was an anti-government guy.

01:06:26.100 And this organization didn't believe that Texas was part of the United States, and they took

01:06:29.860 a hostage.

01:06:30.360 And, you know, and I helped the Texas Rangers and the Texas authorities develop a negotiation

01:06:35.120 strategy.

01:06:35.920 And the same thing, the guy, Richard McLaren, that was in charge of the outfit, had

01:06:40.260 some of these totally obscure beliefs about law and treaties and so forth.

01:06:46.920 Total nonsense, totally unsubstantiated by facts.

01:06:50.900 But you weren't going to convince him otherwise.

01:06:53.280 So to engage in a positive conversation, to move the ball forward, as it were, we had to

01:06:58.580 get him off of that topic.

01:07:00.320 And that's something we do all the time.

01:07:02.480 And, you know, you do that in business.

01:07:03.880 You know, if there's 10 points we want to discuss, and maybe the biggest one, number

01:07:08.220 10, is the thorniest one, you might, as a strategy, say, well, let's talk about these

01:07:12.840 other points.

01:07:13.500 Let's get some agreement on number one through number nine that we can both live with, and

01:07:19.000 then we'll take the thorny one on later on.

01:07:21.540 But what you've done is, by discussing those nine points of potential agreement, you've

01:07:26.980 established a working relationship where you've shown we can work together, we can find some

01:07:31.440 common ground, and it makes it easier for that thorny problem to be dealt with later

01:07:36.540 on.

01:07:38.200 That makes sense.

01:07:39.740 By the way, just out of curiosity, the series makes it feel like, you know, Rodriguez, David

01:07:46.840 Rodriguez, I think his name is David Rodriguez.

01:07:48.640 I think it was Robert Rodriguez, who's played, and the fictional character is Jacob Vasquez

01:07:56.780 that's played by one of my favorite actors, John, you know who he is.

01:08:01.220 John Leguizamo.

01:08:02.200 He's a very great guy.

01:08:03.320 Yeah, all I think about him is Benny Blanco from the Bronx in the movie Carlitos Way, but

01:08:07.460 that's a whole different story.

01:08:08.700 He's great.

01:08:09.720 Was he, was the real life Robert Rodriguez, was he really compromised?

01:08:13.700 Like, did David Koresh really get to him and he converted, or no?

01:08:17.520 He was just playing a part very well.

01:08:19.860 From what I know, he was not converted to the extent that's shown on the TV show.

01:08:26.180 He was doing his job.

01:08:27.980 What is quite accurate, he, I don't think he had the level of engagement with the Davidians 1.00

01:08:33.620 that showed, I think Koresh was pretty suspicious of who he was, but still had some study discussions

01:08:39.900 with him, but some of the stuff about involving him in a wedding and so forth and so on, I don't

01:08:44.860 think that really occurred.

01:08:46.740 But Rodriguez did say, hey, they know we're coming.

01:08:50.940 You need to call this thing off.

01:08:52.200 That was accurate.

01:08:53.420 And, you know, a bad, fatal decision was made that, well, we better move quicker then before

01:08:57.600 they get ready for us.

01:08:58.560 And that was a tragic mistake.

01:09:01.800 That's, and that's ATF saying that they didn't hold back and they just went at it.

01:09:05.940 Yeah.

01:09:06.240 I mean, you know, and you know, from your military experience and law enforcement, when

01:09:09.580 you lose the element of surprise, that makes all the difference in the world.

01:09:12.800 And they had lost it clearly.

01:09:14.880 And instead of canceling, they decided to move quicker.

01:09:18.520 And it was a fatal decision.

01:09:21.140 So, so coming to the last part of the event, at what point, like when you're making progress,

01:09:27.800 you're negotiating with the milk and you're, you know, did you guys actually put the voice

01:09:33.260 detector on the milk or no?

01:09:34.800 That was just a fictional part of the show.

01:09:37.120 Well, I'm not going to tell you where we put it, but it was part of the delivery.

01:09:41.260 And it was part of the delivery.

01:09:42.860 Yeah.

01:09:43.260 Yeah.

01:09:43.460 That happened.

01:09:44.360 And we're trying to determine, you know, what we can, what's going on inside.

01:09:50.760 And if we can gain intelligence that way, and we have some pretty sophisticated techniques

01:09:55.640 to do that, but I prefer not to go into the details of that.

01:09:58.780 But yeah, that happened.

01:10:00.680 I mean, there was a lot of accuracy in some of those interactions, you know, and I didn't

01:10:07.400 personally go out and talk to Snyder and Wayne Martin, but one of the negotiators did along

01:10:13.140 with the sheriff that's accurately projected.

01:10:15.720 We did a lot of things out there to try to show the Davidians that we weren't bad guys,

01:10:21.640 you know, that we, we wanted, Koresh wanted Newsweek and Time all had his picture on the

01:10:27.180 cover.

01:10:27.440 He wanted copies that we sent it in.

01:10:29.040 He wanted sutures for his wound.

01:10:31.460 We sent it in.

01:10:32.800 He wanted milk for the kids.

01:10:33.960 We sent it in.

01:10:34.700 We sent a tape of ourselves.

01:10:35.940 He sent a tape out.

01:10:37.520 We were doing a lot of things and sadly, and unfortunately, and accurately predicted to

01:10:41.860 some extent, but to a large extent was there was a disconnect between the negotiators and

01:10:46.760 the tactical team that, that had a, an aggressive leader that wanted to force them to come out.

01:10:52.820 This was costing millions of dollars a day.

01:10:54.980 I mean, it was tying up hundreds of personnel.

01:10:57.160 It was seen by some as showing the FBI is weak and doesn't know how to resolve one of

01:11:02.220 these things.

01:11:03.580 And for that, you know, the on-scene commander always said, Gary, continue with your negotiation

01:11:10.080 strategy.

01:11:10.620 But then he would also say to the tactical commander, yeah, go ahead with the tanks and

01:11:14.000 crush some cars.

01:11:15.080 Well, you know, if you're inside and I'm trying to, to get your cooperation, you say, I hear

01:11:20.480 you're saying nice things in the phone, but why did somebody just crush my Mercedes in the

01:11:23.960 driveway?

01:11:24.460 So it's sort of, it's counterproductive.

01:11:26.920 You lose all the credibility.

01:11:28.100 So, so the, the number is the number 78 adults and 25 children.

01:11:32.780 Is that the accurate number?

01:11:34.000 The final count?

01:11:34.700 I think it's 77, 78 is, is what I recall.

01:11:38.820 Yeah.

01:11:38.940 I don't have that on top of my head.

01:11:40.240 Yeah.

01:11:40.400 It was tragic.

01:11:41.480 And when that, when that happened and you're making progress and then you're, you know,

01:11:45.540 some of the folks are not willing to be patient to go through it.

01:11:49.900 Looking back, what are, what are some things on this case?

01:11:53.580 When you look back saying, I wish we would have done this thing and this thing and this

01:11:57.300 thing differently, we could have saved these people.

01:11:59.160 Is there anything that you think about today?

01:12:01.460 Sure.

01:12:01.940 I mean, I think for a little bit of history, you have to understand the FBI had done quite

01:12:08.020 a few sieges, Atlanta, Lokedale prison, CSA compound.

01:12:13.020 We knew how to do this.

01:12:15.500 And Waco is not so much a manifestation of us not knowing how to do it right.

01:12:21.160 It is a departure from our longstanding methodology and approach.

01:12:27.680 So, you know, that's the biggest lesson is to do it the way we had always done it before.

01:12:34.020 And, and that was so frustrating because it would be one thing if we didn't know how to

01:12:37.240 do it right, but we did.

01:12:38.960 And, and we erred from that.

01:12:40.280 We had, you know, I certainly have been a critic of the on-scene commander and the tactical

01:12:45.080 commander.

01:12:46.340 Those two along with me basically were the triumvirate that made decisions, but those two were very

01:12:52.020 aggressive oriented, very frustrated, would allow their lack of self-control.

01:12:57.000 And, you know, Koresh would often do something, he probably, he would renege on a promise and

01:13:02.300 he would behave in a, in a troublesome way.

01:13:05.400 And they would take it personally.

01:13:06.620 As negotiators, we just go back to the drawing board.

01:13:09.000 We're used to people lying to us and not following through and we don't overreact, whereas

01:13:14.600 they did.

01:13:15.220 And that created so many problems for us.

01:13:18.340 But despite that, we got the 35 people out, 21 children, which I'm proud of, but, you

01:13:23.820 know, they went with a, I was replaced halfway through because they wanted to go with a more

01:13:27.360 aggressive strategy.

01:13:28.400 And after I left, no one else came out, not a single person.

01:13:32.520 That's, that's a pretty good thing to anticipate to say, listen, they're going to lie to you.

01:13:36.580 It's their job to lie to you.

01:13:37.720 You still can't lose your cool when they're doing that to you.

01:13:39.660 It's part of the game.

01:13:40.840 Exactly.

01:13:41.580 Exactly.

01:13:42.340 Because they're not on the same team as you.

01:13:43.760 They're not on the same team as you.

01:13:45.840 They're, they're, they're an opponent, but you gotta, you gotta somehow win them over,

01:13:49.660 but you cannot be surprised if they're lying to you.

01:13:52.180 Yeah, no, absolutely.

01:13:53.240 You expect it.

01:13:53.980 You expect it.

01:13:54.700 For example, on, I think the third day, David Koresh made an agreement with us that if he

01:14:00.980 played a 58 minute, if he recorded a 58 minute message, we would broadcast it nationally.

01:14:06.400 He agreed quite clearly that after that, he and everyone would come out and surrender peacefully.

01:14:11.680 Now, I remember going to the on-scene commander and I said, I think we should give this a try.

01:14:16.000 And of course, his first response was, what do we get for it?

01:14:18.380 And I said, well, the problem, the real question should be, what do we lose for it?

01:14:22.660 We lose nothing.

01:14:23.460 And if he comes out, great.

01:14:24.980 If he doesn't, you know, then we're going to use that against him later on.

01:14:29.220 Now, he didn't come out.

01:14:30.280 He didn't follow through on his promise.

01:14:31.780 Now, as negotiators, we were disappointed, but the commander and the tactical commander

01:14:37.740 took it as a personal affront because they never dealt with people like this and had people

01:14:43.020 lie to him.

01:14:43.880 It's what I would have preferred in the following days to say, David, I went out on a limb for

01:14:48.460 you.

01:14:48.660 I convinced my boss to let this thing be played.

01:14:51.740 I'm trying to help you.

01:14:53.020 And you just pulled the rug out from under me.

01:14:54.940 And I lost credibility with my boss because you didn't do what you said you were going to

01:14:57.980 do.

01:14:58.240 And I would have hammered him over the head with that for days, you know, and laid a guilt

01:15:03.820 trip on it and, you know, hopefully gotten him to reconsider that and look at it again.

01:15:10.160 But instead, when we went forward and took very aggressive action in response to that,

01:15:16.440 it only ratcheted up the tension.

01:15:18.140 It only increased the confrontation.

01:15:19.780 It was counterproductive.

01:15:21.300 Yeah.

01:15:21.440 I mean, were you on the call when he told you God spoke to me, we ain't coming out?

01:15:24.820 Is that you or was it somebody else?

01:15:26.400 No, I wasn't on the phone with him.

01:15:28.240 It was actually conveyed to us through Snyder, not through Koresh.

01:15:32.680 And it was one of the lead negotiators was on the phone with him when that happened.

01:15:36.940 I was in the room when it happened, but I wasn't on the phone with him.

01:15:39.880 I mean, how do you negotiate with God?

01:15:41.340 God spoke to me.

01:15:41.980 What do you say to that?

01:15:42.860 I mean, honestly.

01:15:43.300 I mean, that's a big Trump card, isn't it?

01:15:46.000 I mean, it's...

01:15:46.620 That's a crazy card.

01:15:48.020 Yeah.

01:15:48.600 Yeah.

01:15:49.060 And it's, you know, and that's another reason, you know, did God really speak to him?

01:15:53.560 You know, a lot of us might be a bit skeptical about that.

01:15:56.100 You know, what I think was David Koresh, as I mentioned earlier, had ambivalence about staying in, coming out, whatever.

01:16:03.200 And I think he got scared at the end and he changed his mind because we know that the children were actually lined up.

01:16:08.720 They had little backpacks.

01:16:09.980 They were ready to come out.

01:16:11.200 All his followers thought it was over.

01:16:12.780 And then he says, nope, we're not doing it.

01:16:15.280 Well, it's him being self-serving and thinking about what was going to happen to him.

01:16:20.740 Yeah.

01:16:21.200 You know, as a financial advisor, we'll go to clients and sometimes clients will say, you know, let us pray about it before we do this.

01:16:27.340 And we'll say, you know what?

01:16:28.340 Let me go ahead and start the prayer.

01:16:29.520 And we put our hands out there and say, let me lead the prayer here.

01:16:32.340 Heavenly Father, should I make this investment?

01:16:33.900 Obviously, we joke about it, but I understand that's the one card advisors don't know what to say.

01:16:39.540 You get stuck when the God thing comes up.

01:16:41.320 It's tough.

01:16:41.760 It's a tough one.

01:16:43.080 And, you know, the people that have those strong feelings, they assume everybody else does too.

01:16:47.340 And it's an awkward situation.

01:16:50.060 But, you know, before we go too far, I wanted to talk about the TV show, which I support.

01:16:55.280 But there's a couple big areas.

01:16:57.780 And one of them is, at the beginning, they show the shootout between ATF and Davidians.

01:17:02.520 And they clearly show that ATF fired first.

01:17:05.380 I wasn't there.

01:17:06.520 I'm not here to defend ATF.

01:17:08.480 But there's a lot of doubt about that.

01:17:10.240 There is contradictory information about who fired first.

01:17:13.940 So I want to set that straight.

01:17:15.440 The other point is, at the very end, they leave the viewer with the impression that the FBI started the fire.

01:17:22.680 And that simply is totally refutable.

01:17:26.280 The Davidians started the fire. 0.97

01:17:27.520 Now, they did it because the FBI put in tear gas.

01:17:29.820 There's no question.

01:17:30.600 But the tear gas itself did not start the fire.

01:17:33.920 And the FBI, I mean, there's people out in the country that think, well, the FBI said, let's go burn this place down and kill all these people.

01:17:39.100 It's just preposterous.

01:17:41.120 You know, David Koresh, ultimately, at the end, you know, decided that, you know, it was better to take his followers with him than to peacefully surrender.

01:17:49.660 You know, while I have always been very candid about the FBI's mistakes, and there were many bad decisions made, in my opinion, I've always said that the ultimate responsibility for what happened was on the shoulders of David Koresh. 0.84

01:18:03.220 Every single day, we gave him the opportunity to peacefully lead his people out.

01:18:07.740 We made accommodations.

01:18:09.300 We made compromises.

01:18:10.520 We did whatever he wanted.

01:18:11.840 One time he asked, if I come out and I go to jail, will I be able to meet with our followers?

01:18:15.960 We sent him in written commitment to do that.

01:18:19.960 So we did a lot of things like that to convince him to come out, yet he chose not to.

01:18:24.520 So, you know, I think it's a bit unfair to characterize, you know, and again, I'm the FBI's biggest internal critic, but to suggest that anybody, even the commander and the tactical guy who I disagreed with, I mean, they didn't want to see that ending.

01:18:38.400 Nobody did.

01:18:39.240 And so I think that's a bit unfair.

01:18:41.000 And a lot of anti-government people are sort of embracing that, but it's nonsense.

01:18:44.560 Yeah, I mean, that's the idea when it left at the end.

01:18:48.480 It's like FBI went in and they bullied them and boom, all these lives on the hands of FBI agents.

01:18:54.620 And the fire controversy, no one knows who started the fire, what caused the fire.

01:18:59.560 Some have said one side, some have said the other side.

01:19:02.020 Last thoughts here before we wrap up.

01:19:04.940 Gary, any modern day calls that keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger that could potentially end up being a threat or not really anything taking place today?

01:19:13.700 I'm sorry, I didn't follow.

01:19:14.820 Any modern day what?

01:19:16.260 Cults.

01:19:16.780 Any modern day cults like what these guys did?

01:19:19.860 Any modern day cults you look at that's growing?

01:19:23.840 You know, I haven't, I'll be honest with you, I haven't, I don't devote much time to looking into what current cults are.

01:19:30.620 However, you know, if you listen to what the FBI is saying, you know, we have a major problem with anti-government militias.

01:19:39.420 Again, you know, we dealt with them before the Oklahoma City bombing.

01:19:44.980 They were gaining a lot of strength, anti-government people, and during the Clinton years particularly.

01:19:50.100 And then after Oklahoma City bombing, where a lot of kids were killed, some of those people dropped off and they said, this is not what I'm into.

01:19:58.080 But now it's built up again, started to build up again under Obama.

01:20:01.500 So there's a lot of people angry at the government and ready to take up arms and do things.

01:20:08.840 We see it in some of the demonstrations that are going on.

01:20:11.220 Somebody got shot the other day in what, Arizona, trying to pull down a statue.

01:20:15.620 You know, and I think we're going to have to reckon with that in this society.

01:20:18.500 I mean, I was appalled when I saw armed gunmen go into the Michigan State House.

01:20:25.080 And, you know, and I'm sorry, I don't think it's unfair to say if 100 or 200 black protesters took automatic weapons in there, I suspect it would have been handled quite differently.

01:20:36.060 And, you know, we have to think about how much, where do we go beyond peaceful protest and the right of assembly and the right of people to express their grievances?

01:20:46.120 And then where do we get into terrorism and intimidation?

01:20:48.980 And so I worry about those kind of groups more than I worry about Antifa.

01:20:54.680 You know, that's a political sort of a tool thrown about now, you know, and I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't see the impact they're having versus, you know, some of the far right groups right now.

01:21:05.840 But we've got to be vigilant to that.

01:21:08.360 And, you know, when I was a young FBI agent, the Ku Klux Klan was pretty strong.

01:21:13.320 And it's an unheralded story for the FBI, but there came a point, and I was working in South Carolina at the time, there came a point where the Ku Klux Klan almost ceased to exist because the only reason they would meet was for various FBI informants to get together.

01:21:28.340 So there'd be 20 guys in a meeting and, you know, 18 of them were on our payroll.

01:21:32.120 And the only reason they were getting together is to report back what was going on.

01:21:35.260 I mean, we knew what they were thinking and doing, and we were able to thwart a lot of terrorism to the point where they just sort of folded.

01:21:43.300 But now there's a huge resurgence in that.

01:21:45.380 And I find it concerning and something that policymakers are going to have to make some decisions on if these people are, you know, don't get out of control.

01:21:54.960 Are there informants on a lot of these organizations that we're not aware of?

01:21:59.240 Like, is the FBI already on the inside knowing exactly, like the city of, the country of Chaz or Antifa or white supremacists or any of this stuff?

01:22:08.620 Are there many informants involved from the FBI?

01:22:11.680 I don't know.

01:22:12.380 I don't know.

01:22:12.960 I would hope that they are legally.

01:22:15.960 I hope they are legally gathering information.

01:22:19.580 I think the FBI has learned a lot through the years that they're not there to thwart political expression but to stop acts of violence.

01:22:28.300 But I don't know how prepared they are in that instance or what level of penetration.

01:22:34.340 In some cases you find that they don't have the information.

01:22:37.700 In other cases they've got it covered quite well.

01:22:39.500 But it's a challenging job for law enforcement today.

01:22:42.520 I mean, you know, we have to contend with so much that gets stirred up in the, you know, through the news too.

01:22:48.920 And I'm not necessarily a critic of the news, but, you know, we've got to watch what we do.

01:22:53.380 And there's a lot of discussion about law enforcement behavior now.

01:22:56.000 I mean, I was watching some of the demonstrations and I was aghast at some of the, I mean, obviously I don't like looters or arsonists and anarchists and they have to be dealt with effectively by the police.

01:23:08.200 And they should be.

01:23:09.320 But I also saw some unnecessary action on the police that troubles me too.

01:23:13.780 So we have to figure this out as a society.

01:23:16.340 What do we expect of our police departments?

01:23:18.460 What do we want them to do?

01:23:20.180 How do they respond?

01:23:21.500 You could say, Waco, we should have just left.

01:23:23.320 Well, is that really the answer?

01:23:25.280 You know, I don't know.

01:23:26.260 I think Republicans and Democrats need to hire you and bring you into media because they don't seem to be able to get along.

01:23:31.200 You need to be hired.

01:23:31.940 Anyways, Gary, once again, thank you for coming out and being a guest on Valuetainment.

01:23:36.220 Patrick, thank you very much.

01:23:37.260 I enjoyed being your guest and all the best.

01:23:40.020 Thank you.

01:23:40.600 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

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01:24:02.040 With that being said, have a great day today.

01:24:03.840 Take care, everybody.

01:24:04.580 Bye-bye.

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01:24:08.580 We'll be back in heaven.

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Valuetainment - August 30, 2020

FBI Agent Who Negotiated With David Koresh During The Waco Siege

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