Capturing The World Trade Center Bomber, Embassy Suicide Bomber, Drunk With A Gun

this is things police see firstand accounts with your host Steve gold welcome to the podcast that interviews active and retired police officers about their most intense bizarre and sometimes humorous moments on the job guys thank you for joining us thank you for being here as always I really appreciate it I appreciate uh all the returning fans and I appreciate the people that have recently found the show and are ripping through the back catalog of these uh incredible stories of the men and women of law enforcement that go out there every day and they do this completely and totally insane job I’m talking about the deputy sheriff or smalltown cop that has a big Patrol area with a small population down to the city cop that’s got uh small Patrol area with a giant population and all the federal agents out there and everybody else the state troopers everybody that does this job they’re all a little bit different but they’re also all uh very similar dealing with the same clientele often in our jobs it is um as a police officer for I’ve been in law law enforcement 17 years and you are all you never know what to expect you never know what people are going to do and you never know what you’re going to see when you go to shift you could have a quiet shift that’s nice and you sign off uh totally unmolested and go home peacefully or you could be held over uh for um an unnamed amount of hours dealing with um some Ridiculousness and a lot of times you see it and you’re like oh my gosh I wish uh people could see this real time because this person this situation is totally insane and I guarantee you the the resident and the people who live around this area would have would be completely shocked at how totally nuts this situation is so um I’m glad you’re here I’m glad you’re listening I’m glad you’re um you’re interested in the profession uh I’m I’m very glad if you’re listening and you’re interested in becoming a law enforcement officer on any level at all because we need good people we good we need good men and women to do this job to hold the line to enforce laws and and basically make people make people pay for doing wrong you know that’s that’s what it’s all about there has to be uh enforcement there has to be rule of law for this Society to continue and we see what happens currently right now in real time when it’s not enforced and what happens when we don’t enforce the rule law we let things slide we let people slide because of feelings or or past trans pressions or whatever you want to call it things just get worse that’s not H that’s not how it works so these are the men and women that do this job and um and thank God for him I thank God for him every day and you should too so the guest today is another uh very very experienced law enforcement officer special agent with the DEA he was assigned to Islamabad Pakistan part of a team that captured the 1993 NYC World Trade Center bombing Mastermind Romy yussef also he’s a retired army CID agent for or for 40 total years of active and Reserve service also deployed at 58 years old to kabo Afghanistan to assess the rule of law counterinsurgent strategy for the J2 section of the Special Operations Command Europe he retired a DEA supervisor supervisory special agent and has written three criminal justice textbooks and then now has dipped his toes into a debut novel Stinger an international Thriller and we’ll tell you all about where you can get that without further Ado let me bring on Greg Lee sir welcome to the show brother thank you how are you doing I’m doing well sir I’m um it’s an honor to have you and like we said before we spoke um Mr Lee here was very accommodating with my ridiculous schedule so we’re starting a little bit late but I thank you sir no problem excellent so you started as uh DEA agent before that were you ever a reserve cop a special police officer or a policeman anywhere well I go all the way back to uh 1970 when I became a law enforcement Explorer for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department wow it was a brand new brand new concept try to get uh kids interested in uh maybe a law enforcement career yeah and let get some hands-on experience by being a ride along along and they put you through a weekend you know like maybe six weekends at the Academy and it was quite an experience for you know for a 17-year-old kid to Sure learn from you know these guys have been been around a while and then when you get to uh an assignment to one of the substations and you get the ride along and you’re wearing a uniform and half the people mistake you as being another deputy when of course you’re not but the whole purpose was for you to gain hands-on experience to see how the the deputies handled situations that came up and back in the 70s in LA L County I mean the sky was a limit I mean we saw everything you could imagine from dryby shootings to uh family disturbances and neighbor quarrels and barking dogs and everything you could imagine so it was quite an education for me and I really learned a lot from it and and appreciated the opportunity to to engage in it yeah I heard um working at lepd I heard that back in the day people were exceptionally bummed out when the sheriff showed up because they would undoubtedly stomp a hole in your ass well there was a lot of there was some severe ass kicking going on in my presence you know I BBE you know but I was hooked when uh you know there was no doubt that this is what I wanted to do and I never dreamed about being a DEA agent or federal agent of any sort I I had uh you know I graduated from high school so I’m 18 I’m waiting you know killing time to 21 so I can apply for the job and in the meantime uh the draft lottery numbers came out in 1972 and my birthday came out as number one so that was a life-changing event for me so there was no question what was going to happen so Vietnam’s still going on I’m about to should be drafted I thought well I might as well just enlist and do the job I want as opposed to getting drafted and be a bean collector at Saigon hospital or something like that yeah my dad did the exact same thing so I enlisted became an MP and the day I graduate from MP school they signed the Paris Peace Accords and President Nixon ended the draft all at the same time but they did draft up to I think number 22 that year so I was I was done no matter what so I might as well make the best of it so my first real where you know I’m now the authority of of sort as an MP was at Fort Brag North Carolina and we had all I mean there’s all kinds of stuff going on but the the Army was riddled with uh jerks and former criminals and I met people at basic training uh they said that well you know I I said well what are you doing here and he says well the judge gave me the option of joining the Army or going to prison wow really and there were a lot of them and he says yeah soon as I PL guilty there was a recruiter at the back of the courtroom him right up and that’s the quality of soldier you had at the time yeah and then uh there was big drug usage it it was a mess it was like you look at it like how in the hell can the Army wage a war you know they can’t keep their own people intact you know so wow all that changed when uh somebody came up with the brilliant idea of having periodic uh year analysis done and they Vietnam was over there’s nothing going on for a while and this was the time to rid the army of these people and they got rid of a whole bunch and they they stopped taking people who didn’t have high school education anybody came positive on the piss test was gone I mean there’s no I mean you’re gone pack your stuff you’re out of here yeah then they started and then the end of the draft of course and they started getting a very high quality uh recruit and after 40 years in the Army believe me I’ve seen everything you can imagine from the way it was in the 7s to the way it was and is now which is really a stellar force with a lot of Stellar people in it and it they’ R themselves of all these Misfits and all that that was going on at the time so it builds a very quality uh Army that you have so but that that worked out fine for me that’s interesting my dad was same thing he was a cape Cotter um during Vietnam so you know he grew up on boats family of sea captains the whole thing and his number was coming went up so he joined the Navy he said I you know I might as well join where I want to join so I’m good with boats I’m nautical I’ll do that and he said in in boot camp he said it was like they were low on um D so he said they had the these huge platoon of guys and not enough drill instructors so he said a bunch of times he was he said I was so tired from the the brief boot camp we went through that that he goes I used to fall asleep on my feet and they would they would do an about face and I would open my eyes and everybody was look facing me and I’d have to spin around real quick and I said well damn didn’t you they must have been all over you and he’s like no no no nobody saw because there was no di there they were just trying to get so many people through you know just for the war so it sounds like they were taking all comers during that oh man when I went to basic training one of the dis he was a sergeant E5 a buck sergeant and he was one of these join the Army or go to jail candidates and and they didn’t play any games back then you know if if somebody didn’t have the right attitude or he didn’t want to go along with program they took them to the other end of the other side of the barracks and beat the hell out of them yeah oh man they that that would never happen now now it’s completely yeah different I I think it’s ridiculous how how how they’ve made it now I think you have a like a red card or a blue you say I know you know I need time out you know no you don’t you need get your ass in shape you know let’s do it you know yeah any it the the pendulum swings you know the way it does so I don’t know where we are now but uh it it wasn’t uh a bad experience for me I I enjoyed it up up to the end yeah you had a little Hands-On correction they call the uh you go to you go to Stockade now if you put your hands on a recruit like that but yeah yeah I know I was friends with a uh um a long shoreman in New Brunswick Canada and he was a supervisor at the port in St John and a good friend of his made it up really high in the military so they decided in Canada like 20 years ago that they were going to send Canadian military personnel to Paris Island to see just why it is that the Marines are so efficient and what Canada can do to get on the same page with the US Marines right so he said he said his buddy came back and he was like all the admin all the upper Escalon witnessed Paris Island for two weeks and they said we we would never we could never subject Canadian citizens to what they do to US military members he said no wonder they’re killing everybody he goes they treat them terribly I’m like well yeah in Canada the US Navy boats have Brass Rail bars on them and they bring girls back you know when they’re you know when they’re in Port to drink it’s like yeah it sounds great but it’s not great it’s not very efficient for killing folks so I always I always thought that was an amazing story I’m like wow well at least they know they’re not willing to do it you know they’ll just let us do it I guess sure Greg can you get into the investigation that led to the capture of the suspect for the 1993 bombings how did that how did that go down and what was your part in it well for let me uh back up a little bit after uh I was an MP for a while I became a CID agent and I did eight years of active duty left as a CID agent uh I I wanted you know at that point you know I had a a master’s degree so I thought I was pretty ripe for the feds and nobody was hiring at the time at this like 1980 when I was ready to get out and so I went to the SEL Police Department uh in Montery County California uh we I been at Fort or prior to that and did my probation period there then my wife got a job uh offer in Los Angeles we couldn’t pass that up so she took the job I went to the Pasadena Police Department I spent two and a half years there and that was I really enjo enjoyed Patrol that was good because when you’re done at the end of the day you’re done right you don’t come back with you know with a case load and the cases are sold you know they bark at you when you come back into the office you know it’s like God say over and over again you got detectives that take over the major investigations you just go back and Patrol well I didn’t have that option as a CID agent or but either way uh I was working one day in Pasadena and my partner who was a brand new probationer she was dating uh an FBI agent and said that uh their DEA had 400 openings wow Z to 400 so uh I think DEA had a total number of 1,00 sworn and then and Reagan wanted to expand it to at least, 1500 so I I immediately called the recruiter and six months later I’m on the job as a de agent wow did the whole background interview everything so uh I spent my first five years in Los Angeles I came up to Monteray County for three years to open an office here then um went to quanico where I was an instructor for three and A2 years and after 3 years the boss comes out and says hey time’s up for all you guys you know go find a home somewhere you got to go back out in the field okay that makes sense so I’m looking around and now in the meantime my wife becomes a DEA intelligence analyst so now uh she was thinking you know it’ be nice if we could go overseas yeah well let’s see you know it gets really kind of uh you know you can’t be too picky when you got a tandem couple but there were several openings in Mexico and Peru I think and uh one of the slots was already taken up because the the agent was married to a CIA agent or something so that was going okay and then they came out and they said well guess what there uh there’s a tandem couple opening in Islamabad Pakistan I didn’t think to much about pakist I did nothing about Pakistan don’t really want to see those sites but it was english- speaking so I didn’t have to deal with uh you know language school and all that stuff so I we took it so we took it and showed up and the first uh no six months were not bad like was not a lot of heavy lifting going on you know our job there mostly is to gather drug intelligence and stuff like that and then um so I mean it the embassy was real nice we got along with all the other Western diplomats and uh everything’s fine and then one day I get to work it’s about 8:30 in the morning and my boss calls me in into his office and in there is uh the regional security officer his job is for the security of the embassy and all personnel there and he’s there with his two special agent assistants which are all part of the Diplomatic Security Service and I knew something you know something’s up because we could tell the the two uh Diplomatic Security guys were running around the embassy the whole week before and you couldn’t get their attention and you’d say Hey you know Jeff let’s go to lunch oh I’m bus bus busy got to go and it was highly unusual for for them to be acting that way so I was concerned that there was some kind of security threat against the embassy and he wasn’t fessing up to it and so now I go into the boss’s office and they’re they are as well as their boss and they said well guess what last week we had a woman who called us because some Pakistani had had gone to her off residence or to her residence which was off the embassy and he could tell from the diplomatic plates on the car that if that was a US plated car and the guy went up there and said uh I know where Ramsey yusf is he’s going to bomb 12 airplanes he’s doing this and he’s doing that and scared the hell out of this poor woman so she called the embassy the two DSs guys go out there interview the guy and fortunately they conclude that this guy seems to be highly credible so in Pakistan everybody the embassy uh with perimeter the security guards all these people they’re all local hires pakistanis so they put him in the the back of their SUV and put a blanket over them and smuggle them into the embassy so they can start debriefing them and this went on for three four days and they’re writing cables to Washington to the FBI the CIA saying we really think this Ramsey YF is going to be here and he he was supposed to arrive the following Saturday now this is Wednesday Saturday’s not here yet but yet when I walk in there they said well this is what’s happened and we thought he was going to be here in two days and it turns out he got here last night and he told our guy that he intends to go to paser take a bus to P shower which is near the Afghan border at 10 o00 so it’s like wait a minute you know time out we’ve got we’ve got the World’s Most Wanted terrorist in town he’s going to leave in 90 minutes and we got to go fine let’s let’s do it you know we’re so my partner Cliff Bess and and Jeff Riner and Bill Miller are the two DSs agents and we take our Foreign Service National investigators that are all DEA cleared and they do investigations and all kinds of stuff for us so you trust them take they we take them with them they’re absolutely trusted and the RSO said that what he wanted to see happen was somebody would sit on the the guest house where Rams of Yousef was and then somebody would uh or all of us would follow him to the bus stop and continue to follow him once he gets on the bus whatever until such time the local authorities arrive said well I don’t know I haven’t been there that long but that does sound very feasible to me I so I’ve never been to the bus station but we’ll go there and take a look and Jeff and I drove over to the bus station and there must have been a million people there and in Pakistan everybody all males with very few exception wear what they call a shual cames and that is like a pajama looking thing they’re usually white they’re long tails that they don’t Tu in baggy white pants to go with they’re wearing uh slippers or sandals of some sort and everybody there nobody had real long hair I mean everybody had hair like ears is you know black hair over Brown Eyes Tan complexion and everybody looks alike and most of them have facial hair I said man there’s no way in the world we’re ever going to identify this guy if he you know slips in with everybody else you who knows what bus he’s goingon to get on all that stuff so right so I convinced Jeff that you know we need to get the hell out of here and go back to the guest house and I called my partner cliff and said you know you thinking what I’m thinking you know we got to hook this guy up I mean if he leaves the uh the guest house before the the calvary arrives we’re never going to see this guy again you know we’ll just hook him up ourselves and we’ll take them to our counterpart which was the anti- narcotic force and shame them into doing something until we can you know the dust settles we can figure this thing out and he said well absolutely you know you know we don’t work for the state department and if we get PNG you know P agada out of there so what it’s a feather on our hat and we’re the hell out of Pakistan so there’s all kinds of incentives to to hook this guy up Greg can I ask you how as a de agent DEA agent how how are you assigned to this rather than a different agency because he’s involved with drugs we’re it drugs had absolutely nothing to do with the fact is we were the only federal law enforcement Presence at the embassy okay other than other than the DSs and and the only thing they do enforcement wise is uh they investigate passport fraud and stuff like that and that’s it so we were the criminal investigators of you know of the embassy and so it was natural for them to come to us to you know ask for assistance interesting okay so so we told them hey look you know I get it you know you’re you know your state department employee and your boss is Adam in about don’t put your hands on them you know we’re overseas we can’t arrest people and all I said I get it you know but all we ask is just keep people away from being Cliff because we’re going to hook the guy up and we’re going to take him you know uh to the ANF in the meantime the US ambassador had driven over to the minister of the interior and told him what was going on and pleaded with him to get somebody out there that could you know take take custody this guy so we had no idea what you know if his efforts were going to pay off or not so we were on the assumption that they nobody was going to show and sure enough we were you know we got back to the uh the guest house you could see where he was one of our investigators had went in there and some BS story about you know he’s looking for somebody found out what room he was in and we realized that the guy was up the second floor and he’s looking out the window at the street below so we know there and just about that time here comes the calvary and the calvary consisted of the Pakistani isi the uh intelligence or interservice intelligence they’re kind of like uh a combination of military uh Counter Intelligence and intelligence and the CIA all ruled into one and they’re not law enforcement but these guys show up up there’s must been a dozen cars two guys in each car and they got AK-47s and they’re they have no idea where it is they were put on the spot as much as we were you know an hour earlier so we met him at the door told you know told them where it was and we all ran upstairs and we and we had the key that we obtained for the registration Clerk and went up there and one of the isi guys put the key in in the door and I thought man oh man you know he he’s you know he’s got to have seen all the commotion going on on the street and he might roll a hand grenade out to to towards us or you know who knows what so I’m around the corner I’ve got this there’s going to be shots fire some damn thing gonna happen and they open the door and springing open and sure enough there he is there’s that’s the guy and he’s in civilian clothes rather he does wear he’s not wearing a schah camise and he’s got no facial hair so it was absolutely complete opposite of what I assumed and he it caught him just flat footed I mean he he had pair of socks on his pants and undershirt on and the of course isi don’t don’t carry handcuffs so they you know they revert to their training which is they took a took his long sleeve dress shirt and tied his hand hands behind his back and they took his uh knit sweater and put over his head and wrapped the the sleeves around them and they whisk them out the door and downstairs and I’m think well where the hell where are we going you know so I get in the one my SUVs with my FSN and we take off F them and we go through all through the residential areas and this is after the bombing right obviously well this is uh two years after the World Trade Center bombing okay yeah and there was a $2 million reward offered for him and he was the hottest thing on the planet as far as go get this guy because it brought in a whole different realm of terrorism was a whole different breed now you know instead of attacking US embassies or whatever sees now they’re attacking us on our own turf right New York city so we follow him to this uh safe house and we go in there and he is uh now somebody found a pair of handcuffs with a long chain that was hooked to a radiator and he’s there in the corner and he’s got his hands handcuffed in front of him and he’s still got the sweater on and about that time the door opens up and here comes a guy named Brad Garrett he’s an FBI agent and he uh in fact he now is the law enforcement consultant for ABC News and has been for some time oh wow I think this incident got him the job another one he did but uh he walked in he had absolutely no clue what was happening nobody briefed him on anything he was flown there because he was going to do some followup uh leads that he had because he was investigating the Amir kanzi case that happened about the same time period this kanzi is another Pakistani National had an AK-47 and he hid in the bushes outside Langley where the CI headquarters was yep and start shooting people as they were caught in the left turn lane to go into the compound and he killed two and injured a whole bunch of others and then he ended up fleeing of course go back to Pakistan so Brad was a case agent on that and he had come and go we’ve seen him every 3 four months he’d show up uh to do some more follow-up and it just coincidentally he was there right after this event so I was glad to see him because I means he could you know it’s your it’s your case not mine right and so anyway he walks in and here I’m in a suit he’s wearing a New York Yankee baseball cap he’s got a sleeveless down jacket on Levis and Tennis Shoes I mean he might as well had a sign over his head so I’m an American you know was OB so they start taking the sweater off ysf and it started it came up and it came right about below his nose and you could see he had this just evil Like A demented smile that rre confidence I mean he I mean this guy thought I’m not going to be here too long I’m just going to say the magic words or Grease the right palm or whatever it is to get out of here right and when they took the sweater completely off him you start you know shook his head blinked his eyes and looked over and saw me and Brad and he knew oh [ _ ] the Americans are here and there’s no way he’s going to get get out of this thing and his with his hands cuffed he started shaking like this and it started rattling the chains thought man this guy he knows he’s toast you know he’s not going anywhere so that was kind of interesting and and so I told Brad why don’t you stay here with him and do whatever you want to do I’m going to go back to the Embassy and get my camera and evidence bags and stuff go back to the guest house and see what the hell’s in there you know who knows so sure enough there was all kinds of evidence of this thing called the banka files banka is a uh Chetan term for the Big Bang and ysph had just come from the Philippines to Islamabad and while he was in the Philippines he was making a bomb with another guy and they were going to blow up uh Bill Clinton on a visit a presidential visit there so he intended to assassinate him and uh the pope who was going to make another visit wow and while he’s you know when you start making bombs things happen and sure enough fire started and fire department was called and it got out of hand and his partner uh stayed behind ysph fled but he left his laptop there the farman take care of their you know take care of the fire and the police are there and they’re curious about what were these two Middle Eastern guys doing in Philippines and you know they smelled the rat and they looked at the computer and they found this one Ms file of was bojena that’s where the name came from and and it laid the whole thing out what his plans were and damn what an idiot he’s like Hunter Biden leaving his laptops everywhere he Yeah well yeah about that’s about right I don’t know if he assumed it was going to be consumed in the fire or whatever but he was more interested in getting the hell out of there rather than be captured by the police so uh it laid the whole thing out that his intent was recruit people who would put explosive devices on 12 us airliners and then rig them up with timing devices so that they would all exp explode the same time over the Pacific Ocean geez I thought Jesus Christ you know so so now here I am in the room where he was arrested on the bed are back in the day if you went to the airport at the ticket County you could pick up a timetable and it was every scheduled flight that the airline had it was all in a tall thin book and you would know you know where you want to make a reservation from and he had one from Delta un uned and American and he had dogeared certain pages where you could see those were flights that were going to go from say San Francisco to Singapore or wherever and so he was identifying the the planes that he wanted to Target plus he had the there was a Time magazine that uh told about how the FBI was trying to find him so he he would read that for his Intel source as to you know where he stood sure uh he had uh there were he a briefcase had nine um Casio watches with the backs taken off and wires soldered onto the back of it he had a one police car it was a toy police car that was battery operated and that was where he was going to stuff all the explo iives in there was a kind kind of C material I I didn’t have any idea what it was but a bomb expert told me later that this particular kind of material was used to stabilize nitroglycerin so that was going to be his source of the explosive and then coupled with the ignition from the battery oper car so I collected all that stuff uh couple days later the FBI showed up you they’re playing with the CIA and they were and everybody just really glad to get rid of this guy I mean the pakistanis were thrill to get rid of him as well and uh before he left Janet Reno wanted to make sure run his his Prince against the prince that ins had taken when he landed in New York without any passport or anything else and sure enough they matched and off he went and when he they I think the landed at Tiaro or titoo something like that in New Jersey and took him by helicopter to New York and when they were flying over the World Trade Centers one of the agents said see you know world the trade Center’s still there and he said well if I had3 more thousand it wouldn’t be wow J damn so anyway I end up testifying uh in the southern district of New York on that case he was tried a couple times for uh World Trade Center itself and then the banka incident and the US attorney there brought to our attention that if you do did the math and the capacity of each of the 747s that he was targeting times 12 would go into like 3,300 uh deaths if that was pulled it off so we were just more than happy to get rid of this guy and and and during the trial he um he he knew he was history you know there was no way he was going to get out of this thing so he elected to defend himself smart so he legal advisor so he had a full for a client for starters yeah and he acted as his own defense and he would ask questions of me as a witness and uh the judge said uh for hand that you address him in a third person so yes Mr ysf did this Mr ysf did that which is kind of like okay I I kind of get and then during the my my testimony it was all [ _ ] questions you know 45 minutes of you know well what about this and what I mean just it it led to nothing and he spoke perfect English and he had gone he he got a masters in electrical engineering in in England so he spoke perfect English and so one of the times he said well well where was Mr ysf at the time you entered the room I said well you’re looking out the window the street below and the judge Duffy uh perks up and he slides his chair over the witness stand and he says agent am I gonna have to remind you again to address him oh my gosh technicalities sir don’t worry about it everything and you could tell the jurors they I mean there was one big big guy in the the first row and he had uh like the Marine symbols tattooed on his forearms and he sitting there like this he’s going yeah see you later yeah man cigg let me ask you the the day at like the night when you got to go home or whenever you got to go home after you took part in capturing this guy was that surreal for you like to to sit down and be like oh my gosh I was part of capturing this terrorist God Almighty I who would it who knew you know least of all me and we were relieved that everything had gone well he’s in custody uh FBI’s on their way uh it was a big relief because once you realize the enormity of it all what the potential could have been and not to mention the guest house was three blocks from my residence so it all kind of put it in perspective that’s crazy man what a cool story um Greg can we take it way back to a young officer or special agent Lee your first the first call that you had when you really got your blood going or you had an adrenaline dump well that my first one yeah it would probably have to be when I was an Explorer uh there call came out of shots fired was a driveby shooting thing and we arrived I think we were the first unit there and there’s this guy lying in his front lawn and he’s dead you know here I am 1 as an Explorer here I am I’m looking like oh [ _ ] this you know and so they’re they’re trying to get you know witness information description of the vehicle all that sort of stuff and then uh later on the the LA County Sheriff’s homicide detectives came out and I watching them like wow I mean these guys are the real deal I mean they’re really pumping this guy good for you know for Witnesses motivation all that sort of stuff it was a gang related type thing so but going there it was like oh [ _ ] you know shots you know and and you get there and then you realize the crooks are gone fortunately and and then you do what you got to do after that so that that was pretty pretty interesting for a lot of experience was gain I bet how did how did it infect you did did it uh make you like were you pumped up were you interested or were you like oh my gosh this is this is nuts no I I I took it for what it is and it’s like hey I get it you know it didn’t deter me at all in fact if anything it just motivated me more to get get in the business you know I being a la kind of guy you know I was considering uh maybe uh movie or TV production there something in along those lines I I enjoyed that too and uh but I got hooked they put the hook in me and I was this is what I wanted to do because it was just so interesting it’s so unpredictable you know they say you know Patrol especially you know it’s uh 95% boredom and 5% sheer Terror yeah really that really about sums it up yeah absolutely I can I can attest to that where you’re like you can have a you can have shifts in a row where you’re like man this is not much going on and then it’s old always I I have to say it’s always when you’re about to get off your shift and that’s invariably and you’re exhausted and something happens and you’re like I’m I’m going to in pad I’m going to the station and uh right I mean I’m a block from the station right and the watch and a guy a drunk driver runs a red light in front of me so I pull him over and sure enough he’s DUI and we had just before shift at the briefing The Watch Commander was saying about how the real tight on overtime we you know avoid overtime at all right always here I am so I arrested the guy and take the station he said well T you hear about the overtime what do you what me you do let him go or give him a ride home I mean what I said no this guy had a go so right anyway just yeah they they don’t want you to give them ride home they want you to they want you to do the job for free mon yeah that’s too funny um Greg can you describe a strange or bizarre thing you’ve dealt with okay I think of it um again in Pakistan there’s no end to Str strange and bizarre things there uh like I said the first 6 months was really really good you know it was it was different and not a lot of heavy lifting and then one day I’m in my office and we hear this explosion which was about two blocks from the embassy and it the Aftershock knocked the screens off the the windows wow place I’m in so I got yikes so this is after Ramsey Yousef a after Yousef got hooked up the FBI decided that well you know maybe we got have a league at there you know a full-time uh FBI presence there yeah you think I think so so we’ve got this uh FBI agent there and so I run see him and say hey let’s find out what the hell happened so he and I walk the two blocks and it’s the Egyptian embassy there was uh two suicide bombers one guy pulls in with his car up to the entryway blows it up creates a big hole in the wall another car follows in behind him goes into the center of the compound blows it up and oh man and so there there’s got to be like a 15 foot crater created by this other car bomb wow and there’s engine parts all over the place and the whole place is riddled with the Shanel stuff and everything on it and the the Pakistani police show up in a flatbed truck and they start taking casualties that are lying around and I mean two guys one ground by the wrist the other by the ankles and they’re swinging them to fre throw them up onto the flatbed truck and then there’s a bulldozer coming and the bulldozer fills the hole up that had all you know all the evidence everything you need is in there and they cover it up and they’re taking more of these people and they throw another body up and next thing you know you would hear a groan or a moan or like you know even though these people are dead or not and FBI agent and I are sitting there and we’re going to the police like what in the hell are you doing and they go well benera who’s the Prime Minister uh she’s coming to see what happened and we want to tidy it up for well that’s the extent of the training and experience of the lustrious Pakistani police Dam don’t have a clue and so anyway that thing did get solved it turned out to be a Canadian national who was a Pakistani with a Canadian citizenship and he had a hard on for the Egyptians I forget exact but it’s like you gotta be kid you think investigating 101 secure the scene right you well the prime minister’s coming you can’t well well that keep her away how’s that sound you know no I mean it’s just bizarre like I tell you a whole bunch of bizarre things and that’s where you’re going to find them Miss in Pakistan it’s CRA it’s like you’re you’re at it’s like you’re constantly at like as we call in the police World in a away game like when a neighboring Community calls you you go in and you help to the extent that you can and it’s great we call it a away game because we don’t have to do any paperwork we’re this there to help Muckle the guy whatever you need to do you go back to your municipality and your you’re good so you’re you’re constantly in this away game where it’s like you’re you’re beholding these local authorities and you have to watch them not know what they’re doing yeah well I I I’ve seen it in pasadia where uh there’s some major disturbance going on somewhere and they call for Mutual Aid and you got all these different agencies around all respond and everybody’s driving to black and white and everybody wears a dark blue LAPD type unit form and when the name tags start coming off you better you know there’s going to be some serious ass kicking going on because you to get in your car and go back to where you came from yeah you’re not the one responsible for the paperwork or anything else yeah hell yeah that’s funny um Greg can you tell us about your most intense or terrifying uh experience as a special agent or police officer well besides the ysep thing it was pretty terrifying being up there when they’re opening the door oh I’m sure I don’t know what to expect but but uh when I was a pasadia policeman uh I had a ride along and she was like a 25y old girl woman excuse me and uh I’m in an area Pasadena where there was a liquor store that all the bums would hang out there and they you know go buy their liquor or steal it and then they go in the parking lot next to next to it and drink it all day that type of thing sure Community was fed up with that crap and so I made a point to go over there every opportunity so one night here’s sure enough here’s this guy uh drinking you know in public he’s drunk so uh I tell him uh well guess what you’re under arrest put your hands behind your back and instead of doing that of course he wants to fight fights on so I’ve got this guy uh his back is against me and he’s pushing me against a chain link fence and I we’re kind of like in a stal me I I can’t get him off and he can’t get me off of him so I tell the Ride Along along get my radio tellman officer needs help and where we are Lincoln and forget but so she gets on the radio and boy that gets the attention of the this yeah I bet like oh [ _ ] The Ride Along is calling for help for the officer so it was it was nice to hear you know here comes the C because you can hear the sirens come from all over the place sure everybody rolls on that so I I’m hanging on to this guy until the first officer shows up and then I figur what I’m going to do is push this guy off of me into towards him and then the two of us could pretty much take care of business well as soon as he shows up I push the guy off and he immediately spins around and with both hands grabs the handle of My Revolver and pulls it out of my uh bankee holster oh and then he turns around points the gun right at me oh my Jesus Christ you know so the whole Situation’s changed now so I fortunately uh you know you revert to your training and we’ve gone through drills like this in the Army actually C school where the revolver was the prevalent firearm at at the time sure and I grabbed the the barrel and held on to the cylinder and if you hold on the cylinder it’s not no matter how hard you squeeze you know it’s not going to rotate the cylinder so I’m hanging on to that in the meantime here come some more officers they all jump on the guy the guy falls over he’s got the gun in his hand still and I I’ve got a A 2inch Smith and won on my on my ankle and I had seriously considered screwing in his head blow his brains out because we could not get the gun away from him and then I thought all this is going through your mind and I’m thinking I’m they’re going to armchair quarterback me forever if I do that so we had went with the officers was grabbed on to the gun and he was weightlifter type of guy and he finally got the gun away from him damn and boy what a relief and then uh so we we take the station book them and uh I’m like man oh man I mean that was make you think and I remember in court later we had a preliminary hearing for the felony California you have a prelim nobody gets indicted it’s a rarity so just just have a prelim and I remember uh when I got done testifying the judge looked at me and he says what what were you thinking when all this was happening I said I thought I was going to die yeah simple as that and so he held him over [Music] and and and uh the detectives talked to him and everybody was convinced that this this guy said he didn’t have any recollection of what happened and I believe him this guy was just so gone he probably blew a 38 or something like that if you did and he had no recollection of what what in the world happened and I you know I I have potency to believe damn man pretty terrifying you know because at at the time too there was some studies that showed that something like uh like maybe 10 or more percent of Officer shooting were from their own weapon yeah which is pretty terrifying so uh the next day uh LAPD at the time was using what’s call a clamshell holster yeah yep yeah they still carry him they they give him the choice they can still carry those if they want well um apparently padan had used him at one time and then for whatever reason the chief got rid of him or but everybody still had theirs I I never had one but the next day after this incident the chief said you can hit put your clamshell on and everybody put the clamshell back on their holster on their belt and I ran down and bought one immediately and I’m telling you that’s what best holster I think I’ve seen and good luck in the Gunna unless you re unless you know where to go where to punch it yeah it’s and it it’s and it spring loads open it’s just like the name implies as a clamshell and then it Springs open and that gun’s right in your hand I mean I really like the thing yeah they when I was at LAPD they um they I was really shocked at the the the Preference they give to officers they let them carry any holster they want and they have a they have a choice of like three or four hangers from Glock to Smith to whatever else and a lot of the old-timers still carried the hinge you know like like it’s kind of a drop leg on a hinge like it it just a yeah like a single snap out like just very uh no retention at all like basically if you could unsnap the leather you could get that and I remember seeing like lieutenants and stuff with of course they were older they they had probably had up their whole career and that’s what they wanted to stick with and they had the the hinge holster with just the leather snap and I I I just remember thinking like these guys must never get in get in the [ _ ] you know what I mean cuz they have these these swing holsters with the with the leather stamp you could just easily grab and all the most of the younger Patrol had the the multi-stage um retentions you know where where it would take a couple snaps or some a rock backwards or something to prevent the gun being taken out but I was just you know cuz when you come from a small agency in the Northeast and uh you go to LAPD and you see these guys you figure well these guys are like Trend Setters they’re like The Cutting Edge and you figure they’re just going to have all the the bells and whistles and all the you know whatever but no they I mean I’m not going to poo poo it or not it it’s nice to give your officers preference to what they want but I was kind of shocked that like these guys that like routinely go to riots and all kinds of other stuff could have just a single snap retention leather holster I was like damn that that seems at the time too when lpds using the clamshell holster the Sheriff’s Office made fun of him said n that’s [ __ ] stuff or whatever I don’t know what their their issue was but they didn’t want anything to do with it yeah so know it’s so weird like the the mass State Police who are very it’s a very squared way organization in Massachusetts they’re very militant they’re their Academy is insane you know these guys are very very squared away the the state prison Mass um forever until recently had the single snap leather holster when all the municipalities we all had triple retention or at least double but the mass State Police always had the single snap and I I swear it’s because it looks nicer you know it’s a Slimmer profile it looks good in the uniform it because they they they do the Sam Brown the Sam Brown cross straps and the the big boots and it just doesn’t it just doesn’t look nice to have a big Honker on your hip with all these retentions it looks nicer to have the single retention holster because it’s more traditional and when uh when I went to DEA went to training they issued you a u Smith and Wesson stainless steel revolver 4 in and I thought whatever but but that was the gun you had to qualify with and then once you got to your field division the policy was if you if you qualified with it you could carry anything from a 380 up to a 44 magnet right it was up to you I mean now think of all the the the guns and the calibers and all that in between that spread yeah and we and we’d go to the range uh in LA and man I wouldn’t want to be the Army because you you’ve got to you know order and keep you know every caliber oh my god there was no standard whatsoever and and and also if if you got in a situation where you’re out of bullets and you’re carrying a 380 Walter and then uh your partner’s got a 9mm Sig he’s he can’t help help you yeah he can’t give you any more ammunition than you’ve already got so it it was really kind of a culture shock the the lacks of uh officer safety or agent safety I saw at the beginning of DEA I me we we went to a multi like a 20 story apartment building and went to arrest somebody and then the the case agent said we had like three people in there to arrest and the case agents they hook one guy up and they say okay and so I hook another guy up and then they look at the other agent and said well hook him up he go you don’t have any handcuffs what what are you kid so I ran back to my car I had my go to war bag in there and I had four or five sets of handcuffs all kinds of and all sorts of stuff and so I run back up and we hook him up too you know like God Almighty just it’s funny but the attitude then was well you know I’m a federal narcotics agent you know I’m bulletproof you know I do anything the hell you can’t I mean you kid you know you die as quick as anybody else around here yeah I I always I’ve said in this podcast before I um you know we get the magazines the national magazines for law enforcement and a lot of the fallowing officers in the back of those magazines are DEA agents like it’s pretty heavy with DEA guys we had during my 20 years we had I think 22 agents kill yeah variety of ways and so I thought man oh man you know this this is just well they’re not proof believe me you you you’ll appreciate this Greg we had um we had uh the da come to town and there was a warrant for local guy he had sold bad heroin and um evidently it was knowingly so he was killing people so the DEA came down and uh we met at the the border of these two towns and we were all going to meet my town the other town and the DEA guys and we’re going to go over and um the da guys were like they pulled up their unmarked explorers you know and for me it was cool cuz I I didn’t deal with federal agents a lot so it’s like oh this cool DEA guys are here and um they were like hey you know we were chatting they’re really nice guys and um they one of the da guys like oh uh I don’t have my vest and the other DEA guy was like I forgot my vest too and they’re like ah screw it you know they just had guns on and badges and we’re and to us it was like Hey man like we’re we’re we’re we’re loaded up we’re we got our vests on all of our gear and we’re like ready to go and the DEA guys are like ah we’ll do it anyways I never forgot that yeah we’re bulletproof Federal under what do you expect and I mean and in this case the kid was kind of a cream puff he was you know he was you know Crying by the time he was in handcuffs but um I always thought like man these they should be more careful you know these guys are doing they do this stuff all the time and they they’re probably just um you know like they say with Firearms instructors the most like I’m a Firearms instructor and the guys that have the a lot of discharges are firearms instructors because of complacency you just do it a lot so you’re handling guns a lot and you end up shooting yourself in the leg or whatever same with these guys they’re doing raids all the time so if they show up to a raid and they don’t have their vest they’re like well we’re not going to hold everybody up we’re still going to do it you know what I mean yeah well yeah I remember in uh I remember my oral interview for DEA uh the uh assistant special agent in charge was asking questions and he said uh oh Pasadena well how many shootings have you been in involved in in Pasadena said none I said when you and when you think about it all the officer contacts with citizens through Patrol or what have you we have one shooting where uh these police were sticking out an ATM for a robber and the guy sure enough K robbed somebody and they were right there and the guy had a gun and it blew him up but that was the only shooting in two and a half years I was there and so I understand now why they asked that question and I can real close to shooting a woman who pulled a like 20 far in shears out of her purse and was trying to stab my partner I damn near shot her I mean to the point where I had to turn the cylinder to click it back in in place because that that’s how close I came you like half a trigger pull and then so then I get to La and we had a shooting a quarter sometimes we’d have two I mean we were shooting people like going out of St yeah if and if you couldn’t shoot him we’d run them over with a with cars yeah whatever it took you know and we had a incident once where agents buying dope from this guy in like a Safeway big parking lot and we’re ready for the high sign you know so we know when to rest him and I could see that the guy’s backup lights came on oh that’s not good so the car is running he’s got it in gear and next thing you know the guy takes off and uh runs around and and crashes gets out of the car and runs somewhere and so I’m in my car and I’m driving where I I can anticipate where he’s going Cat Corner through this gas station so I go ahead of him thinking he’s going to come around the corner I’m just going to run into him let him fly over the the hood of the car and when I get there he’s not there the hell happened you know so I get out of the car and realize that some of Agents had caught up to him and what happened is when he was running he pulled a a little Brea 22 Auto out and pointed it at the agent that was chasing them and the agent happened to be our Firearms guy range guy and he had a big old 45 cult and he shot at the guy and missed him I think he he might have killed a car you know away I don’t know what but this the re anyway what happened is the time he fired that bullet was going over the hood of my car so now I thought Jesus so we grabbed this guy and pantsed took a pants off and gra by the ankles and shook him for any other weapons he had yeah that was pretty terrifying like God Mighty you know here I thought I’ll be the guy makes the tackle with the car and instead I get shot at by my own guy we didn’t see me like so you know every pl’s fine until it isn’t and the minute the minute you have this H you know Wonderful Plan made that’s when all turns to crap it’s that’s the rule my man that’s the way it goes down Greg I’ve had you hear almost an hour I got one more question for you uh it’s a really popular question on the show it’s for um people looking to get into law enforcement they’re they’re looking at um local state federal uh what advice would someone with your experience give to them getting into the field well the first thing is uh you got to keep maintaining a stellar background I mean don’t smoke dope don’t you know yes don’t get a history of a whole bunch of parking and speeding tickets and all that because that’s all indicative of your character yeah have a good credit score have Stellar credit don’t be behind because you didn’t pay your bills or whatever it is because they’re going to look at your credit check to see and all that is indicative of the personality of the person that they’re considering to hire so you you you got to do what everybody is supposed to do and that’s you know obey the law and keep keep your uh pay your bills stuff like that yep and then when you if you if you have any intention of going Federal uh at a minimum you have to have a bachelor’s degree it’s as simple as that and I’ve heard guys say well you know I’m so experienced you know I’ve had you know 10 years working narcotics and you know Boston and all the so why didn’t any it doesn’t make any difference because the the type of cases you do and the deal people you’re dealing with and all is going to require that you have some form of higher education yeah and if you get a masters all the better uh but but but that’s the minimum walking in the door so you know I I suggest you stay in school if you’re a police officer and you’re deciding you’d like to maybe fed Sunday go to night school go you know until you can finish your bachelor’s degree you know you going to benefit you as a person yeah it’s going to uh enhance your quality of life and it gives you a lot more doors that open up too absolutely yeah great advice I mean I see it on the level I’m at where you know you to be a cop they really the requirement for most agencies is a high school diploma which is okay um but you when you’re deal when you where I work I will take on most um more complex investigations so um and I not to my own horn but I’m you know I have a college degree and I’m I’m pretty good at writing I’m good at writing reports and it’s important so when you there’s a lot of cops out there and they think their reports they’re writing are fine but you know when you’re a supervisor you you see everybody’s reports and you read them and even even where I used to work um I had some supervisors that would ask me to read their reports they’d say Hey you know which is not a bad idea if you’re working on a shift with only two or three guys hey it’s going to go to court so why not have someone else read it so I my hats off to those supervisors that didn’t have an ego and they said hey would you read my report well there’s a lot of bad report writing in police work I let me just say that way I’m not going to name any names but they’re especially and and these are street level reports so if you’re going to if you’re really if you’re going to do complex investigations which is required at the federal level and and a lesser and to the same degree actually at the local level depending hopefully you have a detective unit if you don’t then it’s going to fall on patrol or supervisors um it it makes a big difference so if you’re if you’re not if you’re not if the the reports don’t read well and they they they’re not um they’re hard to follow and there’s um grammatical stuff like that makes a difference it’s all a reflection on the writer on the author yeah yeah and you know that the you know that defense attorneys now too like I’ve been on this stand recently where um they Google you they want to know about you even for like an oui like or we call them oui masss or DUI other places um I I had an experience recently where I I left the courtroom and the the defense attorney said hey I want to tell you did a good job and I’ve never had a defense attorney say that to me and I said I did a good job be weary I said uh why are you saying that I said well thank you and he said well I know that because I’ve been listening to your podcast and I said damn really he goes yeah I’ve been listening to it and actually the whole office has been listening to it and it it kind of like sent shivers down my spine I was like okay so these and he was younger a younger guy like in his 30s and I said okay so these defense attorneys he was looking at my social media in my podcast for something about my character something I said something that he could use but in the short after doing it he said we enjoyed the podcast so he liked he a he was a fan like he liked it which was like the optimal outcome then a worse outcome would be he listened to a more an episode where I was more political or you know who knows what I’ve said on this podcast where they they don’t mind picking something and and tearing it apart so I say all that to say like not only will they go after your social media but they look at your report intensely to CU they know they see your report they might get an idea of what what kind of how you’ll handle interrog like a cross-examination and they’ll go after that they’ll try to exploit that of course because they’re being paid a lot of money to defend somebody and their whole goal is to win so I’m again all that to say I totally understand what you’re saying where you’re doing when you’re doing complex investigations they’re G they’re going to want to know they’re going to want at minimum a writing sample and they’re going to want to know you have some kind of some form of higher education um and you’ve been instructed in some way to write a a coherent report yeah just don’t exaggerate whatever you do because you’ll never hear the end of it to get caught right my my big thing is I always I’m always tired I feel like and when I write an arrest report I’ll I’ll I’ll omit something and then once you omit something you can’t testify to it because it’s not in your report so they love that when when you omit something and then they can come back and say well why didn’t you put this in your report or or this that or the other thing and it you know and honestly it has never really affected the the um outcome of the case but it as you know it doesn’t feel good when the jury’s looking at you and you’re like uh uh you know trying to explain yourself yeah it’s no good show y yeah absolutely um such a pleasure to have you Gary um um sorry Gary Gregory my bad your book now you’ve written three textbooks which sounds boring but you’re dipping your toes into something a little bit different now you’re writing novels so I want to hear about stinger and in international Thriller and what that’s all about well stinger uh when I wrote it I was thinking you know as a de agent you’re always up to the challenge you know I need to get from here to there but I have obstacles in front of me uh to do that so how do I get around it so this is one of those how you get around it situations for the CIA they uh want to get their hands on a stinger missile to use in the assassination of Saddam Hussein but there there’s this pesky presidential uh directive that says that CIA can’t kill heads of state so their intention is to uh kill Saddam to avoid a full-fledged invasion of the country to look for weapons of mass destruction they figure they Whack Him and get him out of the way there’s no need to invade the country that they’ll just take it upon themselves to get new leadership there but the they can’t just go to the Army and say hey we’re the CIA and we need this the Stinger because that’s all it’s they can’t do that so they have to find some way of plausible deniability so they come up with they kidnap the mother and sister of a DEA informant who lives in and the sister and mother are in Lebanon and the informant is a Lebanese American so the CIA agent who’s a female June Cohen goes to his house identifies herself as CIA and says hey I know you’re working for the DEA and your par you know your mother and sister been kidnapped and we will rescue them if you assist us and we want you to uh tell your DEA Handler the agent that you’ve got a guy who wants to buy a stinger missile and then we think he’s probably on the ball enough that he’ll run with case and then we’ll see what happens after that so it it’s pretty it’s a it’s kind of computed there’s there’s a lot of uh stuff that I think if if you’re in the business or any anything close to it or if you if you just like Thrillers I mean there’s a lot of everything you can imagine thrown in here and so it’s got DEA FBI CIA CID uh you name it and it’s it is definitely International uh in the way it works and I think you’d enjoy it anybody in the business would would enjoy anybody who’s got any intelligence awesome or police background would enjoy uh if you go to my website you can see the description of or the blurb on the back of the book that it doesn’t give too much away but it gives you I think it just syns that hook that that you’ll probably be really interested in Reading how it turns out sounds awesome and it’s available on Amazon Barnes & noble.com and blackrose writing.com is it can they get to it they obviously can get to it through Gregory d.com as well I’m not selling them you know my my publisher is in charge of that but if you go to my website you’ll see the cover of the book on it and you just click on it it’ll take you right to the Amazon page for the book and if by chance you were to uh buy it and read it and enjoyed it I would encourage you to please leave a review an honest review on the Amazon page and follow me on there as well well and that way uh you’ll be first to know if there’s anything else down the road hell yeah and a lot of listeners actually do purchase the books from guests and they love them so I encourage everybody to do that Greg I am so sorry I called you Gary I don’t know why that happened my man I think I’m flipping through screams and I’m like John no no problem John there now we’re even even Gregory D le sir it was an absolute honor to have you fantastic stories fascinating everybody should go get your book and um can you hold on just uh like two or three minutes when I do the outro sure all right the great Gregory Lee everybody um fantastic stories uh just just fascinating to hear him talk about it an honor to have him on thank you sir I appreciate it this is the time in the show where we thank the patreon sergeants who I’m talking about oh boy oh my buttons are screwed up hold on stand by there we go don’t know how that happened who I’m talking about is the ja family Jessica King Jason labre everybody the great Bentley Barnett Zachary pleet the great Sheriff Ronald long oifer Andy Adam McMahon everybody Clark cluff the great Nancy Hammond Zach Haney everyone Brad Thompson Kyle Roberts the great jce Crow Christian ladies and 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no worries at all the show will remain free all I ask is that you give a fstar review on your favorite podcast platform preferably Apple but Spotify is good too I love you guys and I’ll see you next [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] time Videolytics Tools Compare – off Summary