The Secret Service Playbook (U.S. Secret Service Agent)

What does it really take to open a locked human safe? Not pressure. Not tricks. Presence. Retired US Secret Service special agent Brad Beeler joins me to unpack the art and science of getting to the truth when everything rides on a single expression or a mistimed pause. From presidential protection to high-stakes interviews, Brad shows how tactical empathy, careful prep, and an unwavering poker face can turn silence into clarity.

We start with the foundations: reading people without judgment, building a confessional environment, and crafting first impressions that calm the nervous system. Brad shares how a deaf best friend taught him to rely on eye contact, congruent body language, and vocal tone—and why letting someone “bathe in their own dopamine” builds trust faster than any script. He then takes us inside the “King of Counterfeit” case, revealing how a meticulous forger exploited human shortcuts and how aligning with ego, curiosity, and respect led to confession, twice.

Not every interview is winnable, and Brad is candid about the difference between situational offenders and the rare truly predatory mind. He explains the coping rituals that keep the job from following you home and the moments he values most: when a careful conversation vindicates an innocent person. We also cover career advice, the whole-person hiring approach, and a grounded look at polygraph—imperfect yet useful when paired with honesty and solid process.

If you’re a leader, parent, teacher, or anyone who negotiates under pressure, you’ll leave with practical tools: ask better follow-ups, avoid stealing the spotlight, prepare like it matters, and speak to the why beneath the what. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves real-world psychology, and leave a review—what insight will you try first?

Links:

https://bradleybeeler.com/

https://www.secretservice.gov/

Socials:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradbeeler1865/

https://www.instagram.com/bradbeeler1865/

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Transcript

Setting The Stakes: Getting To Truth

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Imagine this. You're sitting across a table from someone accused of a violent crime. You're there to get the truth out of them, but that's often locked away inside them like a safe. And your job is to crack it.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Not everybody just wants to, when you hit them, I don't believe you. Very few people are like, okay, you got me. Alright? I mean, you can hit people with DNA and they're still like, was it me?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

This safe doesn't open with physical tools. Your tools are different. They're body language, tone, timing. You get it wrong, and you've failed, and you're done.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

They are very adept at looking at your reaction, so I really have to be very, very careful about what I'm putting out into the world. I've heard the craziest things on the planet, and my my face doesn't change from the way it is right now.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Some people unlock easily. Others, it may feel impossible.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

I have met three evil people in my life. There's people that literally said to me that's how they keep their sanity is by committing these horrific acts against children.

Meet Brad: Secret Service Origins

SPEAKER_00 1:02

For 25 years, the Secret Service trusted Brad to protect presidents and to get the truth out of people who didn't want to give it away. And today, he's here to reveal the secrets of his craft. I'm your host, Chris Byron, and each week I sit down with a guest whose job is far from ordinary. We're going to explore how they got there, what it's really like behind the scenes, and then I'll ask them to relive the single most unforgettable experience of their career. Now before we dive in, a very quick announcement. There's some fun bonus content from this week's episode. So stick around at the end to find out more about that, as well as our weekly listener story segment and a sneak peek at next week's episode. Okay, so on to this week. Um a quick disclaimer: this conversation includes discussions of criminal cases and situations that some listeners may find unsettling. So please take care while listening. My guest today is Brad Bieler, a retired US Secret Service special agent whose 25-year career sits at the crossroads of protection, investigation, and analyzing human behavior. What makes Brad's story so compelling isn't just the presidential motorcades or the foreign trips, it's the other side of the job. The high-stakes interrogations that hinge on a single expression. Brad's career is really a masterclass in communication, learning how to get the information you need from someone by reading subtle shifts in posture or tone, or how to make decisions that de-escalate the situation. His No Ordinary Monday story this week is a brilliant example of that. It centers on the so-called king of counterfeit, a man whose work was so precise he fooled countless people and passed off millions of dollars of counterfeit money. Brad walks us through the tricks that he used to get him to eventually confess to his crimes. You're listening to No Ordinary Monday? Let's get into the show. Brad, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing, man?

SPEAKER_02 3:15

I'm doing great, Chris. Uh wonderful. Good weather here in South Carolina, so thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Ah, beautiful, beautiful. Uh, I've seen you you've been doing a lot of uh podcasts recently, and uh, we were just talking about that recently. And um what's it like being on the other side of the mic? Because I know you're usually on the interview.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

It's terrible. I don't have any control. I don't know what's coming out of left field here, right? Here you are over in Indonesia, plotting some kind of questions to throw at me, and uh I'm not used to that. I'm used to the one having a little bit more control in the situation, so it's tough.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Aaron Ross Powell Nice. Yeah, now you know how your um now your interviewees are interesting. Interviewers are interroges.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Yeah, I I guess we go. Interrogatees, yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Aaron Ross Powell Interrogatees, there you go. That's a good word. So there's something I wanted to ask you just before we're gonna get into stuff, is that you know when I I I made lots of documentaries in my time, about 15 years in in that in that business. And when I sit down and watch a documentary, I cannot help but like analyze, interrogate, criticize, pull it apart, think about how they did that. And for someone like you who's done communication um, you know, has been so involved in that, you know, body language and everything, if you're just in a normal conversation, you know, is that always on in your brain? Like if we're talking now, are you are you analyzing every part of my um output in terms of communication?

SPEAKER_02 4:33

I I would say probably not. I try to try to not bring it home. Uh I think I definitely have a little bit of a dimmer switch there. Yeah, because if I didn't, my wife would would beat me, right? Uh but yeah, with I think more so with the kids. Where you're going, who you're with, what you're doing, what are the plans. I think I uh kick it up a l a notch there, but uh my wife will tell you that I do have a pretty good job of uh turning it off, I think. I think your mind would you it would be too much cognitive overload. You would go crazy if you're if you're always looking at things that way. You have to you have to kind of look for the best in people sometimes. And unfortunately, I've had to talk to some of the worst.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how old are your kids, if you don't mind me asking?

SPEAKER_02 5:12

So I got a 14-year-old, so just uh started high school, and then my son uh is at a military academy. Uh he's so he's 20. So uh, you know, one's getting ready to get out of the nest and uh the other one's still there.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

So yeah. I was saying, like, you know, that's teenage years. I'm sure that um that sort of interrogator's mind must be tough with the Especially with the daughter.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Especially with the daughter. It was uh she brought her first boyfriend home to the house, and uh of course I had my I was getting ready to go to work and I had my badge and gun on and uh there's my polygraph stuff in the background. It was like meet the parents. I felt for I felt for the young lad when he came over there. Uh he was very nervous, but uh he handled it well.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Can I ask you a question? Are you gonna polygraph um him if needs be? If you ask if he asked for your daughter's hand in her.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Uh yeah, yeah. I've had friends, you know, nicely ask, hey, would you mind uh polygraphing the uh the boyfriend, the prospective suitor? Uh would you mind? And then uh obviously not, but uh, you know, I think it's just more so asking those deep questions and uh you know trying to get patterns of behavior and so on and so forth without the polygraph. But uh it is a nice uh impressive um tool to kind of have in a in a glass case behind you when you're talking to the boyfriend.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Nice. Yeah. It's yeah, you don't need you don't need to pull out, it just needs to be there as an intimidation. Fantastic. So um I just want to start with um you know, obviously, you know, people jumping onto a show like this, going, oh great, former Secret Service agent. Everybody probably is thinking movies, you know, sunglasses, earpiece, at the you know, just behind the president, that kind of thing. But I was so surprised to find out that actually the job is way more sort of diverse than just you know protective detail. Like you're helping out police forces, you're doing interrogations, you're doing you know, counterfeit stuff. Like I wonder, you know, if those are the kind of the three main buckets of of kind of roles that you played within uh your Secret Service career. Just sort of break those apart a little bit and just tell us what each one of those uh how how it sort of breaks down and what you got up to.

The China Standoff And Language Barriers

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Yeah, absolutely, Chris. Uh so it's one of those things where Secret Service was founded in 1865. It was one of the last things that Abraham Lincoln actually signed into law, an agency that ultimately would have protected him, obviously wasn't there at Ford's Theater, but it was set up for uh to stop counterfeit because the Confederate States of America had been counterfeiting multi-millions of dollars trying to upset. That was kind of one of their mechanisms of a war was to try to cause massive inflation in the North. So uh what they did is they said, what kind of people are worthy of trust and confidence? What kind can work undercover? And in its early years, that's what it did. It worked civil rights, it worked counterfeiting. Uh it then it took over protection in 1901 after the third U.S. president had been assassinated. And after that, it kind of had that dual role uh of counterfeit. Um, it was in the Treasury Department at that time, and it wasn't until after 9-11 that they went over to Homeland Security. Uh, but we still have that dual role because what we found is that good investigators become good protective agents, and vice versa. The observation skills that you get early on in your career as you're developing, you get seven, eight years in, and then you go to a protective assignment. Uh, and it's a really good way to kind of distill a lot of those things that make for a good protective agent. And then when you come back to your career as a supervisor, you can kind of mold that next generation of agents. And also, if you're trying to do a protective career for 25 years, you would burn out. The divorce rate would be ridiculous. Uh, you just wouldn't have any work-life balance. So for me in my career, I started in Chicago and I started in a counterfeit squad. And it was great for me to kind of cut my teeth there. And I had a great partner that was a former Chicago police officer that kind of showed me the ropes, the snot-nosed kid. He he showed me the ropes and uh was very helpful, keeping me safe. And uh then, I just saw like, wow, I really like talking to people and I see these polygraph examiners, and they are able to work with the local community, especially on crimes against children. I want to do that. And I was blessed to get selected and did that for 17 years. And kind of in between that point, I was with former President Bush, so Bush 41. And then the last eight years of my career, I uh taught interviewing and interrogation at the Federal Polygraph School. So that was kind of it. Pulled the plug and here we are. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

And I wanted to go, I mean, obviously, with the um the uh protection detail work that you did, I mean, you got to do some amazing travels uh all over the world. I think you like to like 40 countries or something like that. Um and there was a question, I mean, we kind of talked about this story before we start recording and stuff, but like there's an amazing story in China um that uh it's kind of like you know, all your work is about communication, and that story is kind of like communication, but there's like a language barrier on top of that. Yeah. Um I wonder if you just walk us through that story.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Yeah, it's 2008, and I was one of the advance agents for former president Bush, and he was over there, and the his son, Bush 43, so W, was over there as well as the sitting president. But HW was the honorary captain for the Olympic team. Um, you know, kind of a ceremonial title, but he would give speeches and he was over there to watch all the events, and we would go to see Michael Phelps win a gold. We would go to the opening ceremonies, all these types of things. And one of the events we were at was to go watch all the athletes practice at uh a university over there. And the U.S. had taken over the facility and stocked it, and that's where you could watch ping pong. That's where the the weightlifters were. It was where the dream team was. Okay. So the president and his son wanted to go over there and they wanted to watch, you know, all the athletes practicing. So you got Mike Czecheski and the dream team and LeBron and everybody over there. And so my eyes were blown apart during the advance of being able to see these athletes right in front of you, right? Uh the problem was that about 10 minutes before arrival of our protectees, about 15 local police officers from Beijing showed up. And I'm sure they were given orders, make it safe. And that probably means you're gonna do what you need to do to have no chance whatsoever that there's gonna be an issue. Well, their view of that was well, we're gonna stop all the practices because we don't want, you know, somebody to be run into the protectee. We don't want somebody to, you know, where we couldn't control them. So they literally herded all the U.S. athletes at the front of the stairs, and we're trying to explain. No, no, no, no. We the president, they want to watch the event, right? Um, but here I am. I speak no Mandarin or Cantonese. Um I had an interpreter who was another agent who spoke very, very fluent Mandarin, and he's trying his best to try to explain to the to the head. And there's at this point now, there's pushing, there's shoving. We've got some of the athletes pushing with the police officers. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, we're gonna get athletes arrested. And in my earpiece, I'm hearing, hey, we're one minute out. What's the situation report? And I'm just like, I don't know, right? I don't know what what's going on here. And luckily, uh, my interpreter we just said, hey, let's empower this uh sergeant or lieutenant, whatever he was in their force. And we just begged and said, Hey, would you would you mind showing us around? Would you mind leading us through? And he was able to kind of puff his chest out and peacock a little bit and get some respect. And that's what it boils down to is you give people respect. And he was a very honorable man. I'm sure he was just giving orders to that he didn't understand. And then uh luckily we were able to have everything go off with a hitch and avoid kind of an incident at the Olympics. So uh it's one of those things where communication is so important. And new technologies out there now. I mean, the new iPod, the new uh AirPods, you know, they've got real-time translation in it. And that would have been amazing to just be able to give one of my AirPods to uh the counterpart and just have a conversation like that. Maybe we could cleared it up. So technology is gonna help.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

God, yeah. The stakes, the stakes must have been so high. You're like presence on the way, one minute out, you've got a potential international situation unfolding.

Reading People: From Deaf Friendship To Craft

SPEAKER_02 13:08

I was a little stressed. I was a little stressed. But we try not to, you know, it's one of the things in the Secret Service that they do teach us is they're like, never let them see you sweat. You never run when you can walk. Um, you keep that kind of you know affect where you're not being bothered because uh emotions are contagious. And when you show that you're concerned, it's kind of like uh if you're ever in turbulence on a plane and you look and you you look at the stewardess and you see uh the flight attendant, are they scared? Because if they're not scared, you're good to go, right? When they start getting scared, we got some problems. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

I actually I have a little bit of flight anxiety as well, and it's exactly the technique I'm looking at. I'm looking at the the people who I say they fly day in, day out, and they're just sort of they might be bumpy and they're just sort of laughing, having a conversation as if nothing's happening. And it happens to be.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

And of course, they're trained to do that. They may be scared inside, but they're putting up a front.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Don't tell me that. No, I'm watching it like, oh, they're actually scared, but yeah. Um, I'd love to go back uh just a little bit at your origin story. You know, what did you, you know, what did you want to be as a kid? Did you picture yourself as a little boy, you know, up there with the president being the Secret Service?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Aaron Powell Not at all as far as that level, but I always viewed myself as like cops and robbers, like I was the cop. I had my little green machine, which I don't know if you're familiar with those. I'm dating myself a little bit, but my little uh plastic three-wheeler uh trike, whatever you whatever they were. But you know, uh they weren't very safe, uh lots of bumps and bruises. But I just remember my friends, we would always be doing cops and robbers stuff, and I always wanted to be the one kind of chasing them down. And then uh once again dating myself. But here in the States we had a TV show called Ships with uh John Baker and uh Poncharello, and uh it was basically two uh California highway patrolmen, and they would basically solve the world's greatest crime every week, and it was one of those things we're like, ah, that's great, right? So I did go to college for criminology, played soccer in college, and uh I got redshirted one year, and the coach is like, hey, if you stick around, we'll pay for you know your grad school. And so I went to criminology. And during that time, uh I interned with the Secret Service, and I was like blown away uh to see these men and women that were sacrificing and traveling all over the world, and we're always there for one another. It was really good camaraderie uh teamwork. And as a result, I got to go to a visit where President Clinton came in and got to meet President Clinton. And I I think I was more in awe, not of meeting President Clinton, all that was great, of the counter-sniper team and the counterassault team and uh the people working presidential protection. I was just like, wow, that is that is great. And that's what really got me hooked. Like, I gotta do this. And three, four years later, that's when it kind of came uh as an opportunity that I seized for sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Um I want to go back to something that is in your book, which is really interesting, which is kind of like, again, I think it's such a critical part of your origin story about how you really got into this sort of like the the the communication side of things. Because obviously, protective detail is you know, there's a lot going on. But when you're trying to analyze, you know, especially interrogations, is the story of your best friend and how that kind of led into things. Can you talk walk us through that?

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah, absolutely. So I was 15 and in my where I was at in school, I'd play soccer, and another individual played soccer named Doug, and uh we hit it off, we became best friends. I was the best man in his wedding, he was the best man in my wedding, and uh we've we've stayed so close since in that uh he was deaf. He got a uh uh he got a really, really bad fever when he was about one, and it caused uh damage to that part of his brain, and he couldn't hear. So uh he religiously learned how to read lips for three or four hours a day, but uh, you know, I could only do so much with that. You had to be present in that conversation. I had to look at his face, he had to look at my face. Uh the body language is what really spiced up the conversations, and he could really see when something was off. His ability to pick up kind of hidden messages was I was in awe of. Like he was the type of person that would always be like, What's wrong? And like I didn't know I was putting that vibe off, but there was something wrong. He just he could sense those things because he had to, right? Like he developed that ability, and that really blew me away. So I took a sign language class, and you know, it helped when we were playing on the same team in college, and we just continued to realize that how important being present in a conversation. And nowadays, what do we do? We're we're not present, we're looking at our phone, we're we're looking away, or you know, we've gone from Shakespeare to emojis again. We've gone to cave paintings basically with the use of emojis. We don't speak to people, and it's kind of like you know, if your significant other Chris sends you a text and says, I'm fine. I mean, I unless there's if there's no emojis on that, we're in trouble trying to decipher that, right? And if even if I call my wife, that's gonna help because it's either gonna be, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, but I'm hearing the voice that's helping me. But if I can see her like I can see you, then I can put the music video together. It's not the words, yes, it's not uh the lyrics, it's not the soundtrack, it's the music video. And I need the music video. Uh so I think that's what uh I really love when I talk to people on Zoom versus just a phone call or FaceTime versus a phone call. Because you can pick up those hidden messages that you can't pick up uh just with someone's voice, and you definitely can't pick up through an email or through a text.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

It's amazing. I just love that um part of you know, like you know as a 15-year-old, you know, really want to connect with this person that you've struggled to connect with and um and you taking the extra mile to sort of go into sign language. I mean, how did all of that experience? I know you you and Doug are still friends to this day, I guess, you know, and um still talk, but how did that experience sort of feed into your skills as an interrogator? You know, did you think that doing all that at an early age make you a better interrogator?

How To Build Trust In The Room

SPEAKER_02 19:11

No, I I never knew that it would it would play into that, right? Um I I think eye contact was such a big part of that. Vocal expression was such a part of that. So I would enunce for him to read lips, if you have a beard or a mustache, he can't read your lips, he'd have a hard time reading your lips. Okay. Wow. So, but even if, like, for instance, if you've got a full beard, if you enunciate very good, he could read the lips much, much better. But what I found is the congruence between what you're saying and the body language that goes with it is a force multiplier. When you look at the top TED talks, uh they tend to have, you know, 400, I can't remember what the number is, but 400 uh body language movements during 18 minutes. And they're tend to be congruent. Too many people don't use body language or their their body is tight, right? Or they don't use those minimal encouragers like you're giving me right now. You're giving me that little head nod, or you're giving me that eyebrow flash when I say something that's important. And that's so great on how to further communication to know are you receiving my message? Uh I think people have lost the ability to look people in the eyes, shake people in the hand, use people's first name. And we're caught up with titles, emojis, and and those types of things, and it really, really hurts communication.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

And so when you're going into an interrogation with um, you know, let's say someone who's accused of of horrific crimes, and your job is ideally to get a confession from them or get information that might lead to the whereabouts of something to solve a case or whatever, like walk us through the skills and the sort of um the things that are going through your head as you enter that room and looking at them and then going, okay, this is my job. I have to sort of figure this one out.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah, so absolutely. So let's say you were accused of whatever crime, robbery, whatever. Um I view it as how do you make good barbecue, Chris? Right? You prep. I gotta, you know, I brine the meat, or I've gotta rub the meat and let it sit. You know, I've gotta whatever, put it in a base for a certain amount of time to let that infuse into the meat. I have to have the right equipment, all right, the right barbecue. I gotta have the right temperature, I have to have the right timing. Uh good barbecue is like good communication. It's not grilling, it's not fast, it's slow, it's slow, done with prep work, methodical. Okay. So if I was gonna talk to you, I would really spend time looking at what you're putting out into the world. And what I mean by that is you've been in documentaries for a long time. I'd go back and look at those documentaries. I would go back, and as a result, to promote those documentaries, you've got a social media trail. I would go on your Instagram, I would go on your tweets, and I would go back 15 years. And 25 years ago, people would put that stuff in a diary under their bed. Now we're all narcissistic, we're all looking for validation, we're all looking for followers, so we just put that out into the world. That's free. That's that's that's that's manna from the gods for me as far as communication. And I take it. And so now I can create the perfect social media reel for communication with you because I've seen your likes, dislikes, swipes left, swipe rights. So I can make a targeted message to you instead of have to ask you questions where I'm over here, over there. I don't know what you're I know what you're biting on. If you were a fish, I know what bait to cast because you're telling me what you like ahead of time. So I do my prep work, right? So then I'm gonna, I'm gonna set up the perfect environment. And what I mean by that is if we were in a Catholic confessional, what makes it a great environment? It's private, it's non-judgmental, nobody knows you're there, and we're provide we're having a professional person that's providing you advice. So I'm gonna create an environment that's as close to that as possible, where not a lot of people know you're there. It's homey, okay. Uh, it doesn't look like an interrogation room. And I'm not gonna judge you. So if you say a bad thing that you did a bad thing, I'm not gonna be like, really? Like a priest would never be like, what? You did what? Right? So I would uh I would definitely not provide any judgment. I've heard the craziest things on the planet, and and my my face doesn't change from the way it is right now. I just kind of agree with them. And what we would do then is after we create the great environment, I would I'd have a great first impression with you. I would want you to put a halo upon me. Okay, and what I mean by that is I would want a great handshake. I'd put antiperspin on my hands, I would warm my hands up before I meet you, and I would give you a great 45 degree angle right above your navel handshake that is not a shake but a hold that's brief with eye contact. And when I do that, your oxytocin, your dopamine is gonna be fired, your cortisol is gonna go down because this is a significant life event for you, and you are gonna impart upon me. I'm gonna ventrally front. What I mean by doing is I'm gonna expose my sensitive areas of my body. Um, imagine a dog when you when it's comfortable with you, it rolls over and shows you its belly. That's basically what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna blade my body. I'm gonna give you an eyebrow flash, I'm gonna kick over my my neck to the side to expose my carotid and jugular. And as a result, those are friend signs, right? I'm also gonna have a slightly deeper tone because you've been programmed over a million years that if you hear a higher pitched voice, you're gonna associate that with danger. So I'm gonna work on that. And the other, you know, Dale Carnegie quote is be the most interested person in the room, to be the most interesting person in the room. So I'm gonna, when I'm first talking to you, it's gonna be 90% you, Chris. And I'm gonna let you be the dog off the leash that's just taking me on a nice walk. All right. And that's gonna once again make you feel more comfortable. I'm gonna ask about family, education, employment, and I'm gonna spend a hell of a lot of time asking about leisure activities because you spend a hundred hours a week doing things that you choose that you enjoy. So I want to know about that. So let's do that, Chris. All right. So what do you like to do in your free time? Uh I like rock climbing. Wow. Wow, that's really I mean, are you uh is this like I mean, how how tall how tall are we going here? I'm scared of height, so I I applaud that. But what how high are we getting here?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Well, it depends if we're in so inside or outside climbing, but outside climbing 20 meters?

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Okay. So I mean, you're are you free climbing this or are you all like repel, you gotta rope on and everything? I got ropes, man.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Uh it depends. If I'm doing you know, like deep water solo, then uh we're over water, so we can fall on the water. But um if we're on a hike and high rope, then we'll go on ropes. Yeah, it's safer. Still now.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Are you doing this all over the world during your travels? Yeah, yeah. All over the world. Okay. All right. What's your what was your favorite uh face that you did, or if that's what they call it? Rock face or whatever. What was your favorite place to do it at?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Uh I'll probably say uh Rayleigh Beach in Thailand. Okay. Was it beautiful surroundings, I assume? Stunning. Archipelago, islands, karst landscape, beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

So what about rock climbing that brings you joy?

SPEAKER_00 26:02

I love it because uh where it puts your mental state, you know, you're forced to go into, you know, it's a your all of your mental focus is on the task at hand, so it makes everything else push out the way and you're kind of in the zone.

Tactical Empathy And Dopamine

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Love it. So the point I was trying to get there, Chris, is a couple things, right? Those last two questions, when I asked you what your favorite was, you went back into history. You weren't thinking about the moment, you weren't thinking about, oh my gosh, they're gonna ask me this question if I did that thing, right? You were going back to a time that was one of your favorite times. It was beautiful. I saw your eyes light up, dopamine, oxytocin, uh, no serot uh serotonin, no cortisol whatsoever. And and who are you associating that good feeling with? I'm the only other person in that conversation, right? So I start to get a little halo above my head, right? Um, but the other important part was the last part you said where I said, what is it about? And you said you have to be 100 completely 100% completely focused. And when you're 100% completely focused on something, you everything else is in the background, all right? And the what it does is it all the other stresses and strains that use going on in life are in the background, right? Static. I don't know what rock climbing is like, but I like to do Brazilian jujitsu. And why do I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu? Because of static in my life, and I have to be 100% focused, or else somebody's gonna choke me out or do bad things to me. So the underside of the iceberg of why you rock climb is the underside of the iceberg of why I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. So two people that have very little in common are doing some purpose, something for the same purpose. And I don't care if you're a child molester, rapist, robber, murder, whatever, I can talk to you about that. You light up. And where that came from me was in grad school, I worked on a project called drug use forecasting. And we go to the St. Louis City lockup, and I'd give you a Snickers bar and a mountain dew to talk to me. And I got paid by the hour. It was a really good paying job because nobody wanted to do it. And I was like, this is great. I'm a small town kid. I'm talking to uh a guy that's in there for murder or whatever. And I would be talking to a pimp and I'd be like, hey man, how do you get more money? What makes a good pimp and a bad pimp? Um, somebody there for crack, I'd be like, How do you make crack? Uh, somebody there for meth. How do you make methamphetamines? Oh, okay. You get a two-liter bottle and some match sticks and some Coleman fuel, and then you, oh, okay, well, man, could that blow up? And like, they're teaching you. And when people teach you, they connect with you, right? And plus, that's something that's now always in my brain. And when I do talk to somebody that's in the similar role, I now come across like I'm, you know, knowledgeable. And the problem that we have is too many times, let's say we're on a plane, Chris, and I ask you, What do you do in your free time? And you say rock climbing. What do I do? Oh, me too. I I rock climb. Right? And then I just stole any dopamine hit that you were gonna get, and now we're in this back and forth, and I see it all the time. It doesn't matter if it's running. I did this marathon, oh yeah, I did it too. Or I did an Iron Man. And you get caught in this me too, instead of let people bathe in their own dopamine and experience. Like, let's say I was a rock climber and I'm asking you these questions and I'm asking you educated follow-ups, then you would say, Man, do you do you climb? I'd be like, Yeah, man, I've been doing it for a while. It's awesome, isn't it? Now that we got the best of both worlds, yeah, you got the dopamine hit. I don't come off as a no at all, and now you're gonna start asking me questions. So be curious. Tactical empathy, those types of things are so important, especially when you first meet people, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

It's crazy, it is honestly, because I was, you know, all the different things, you know, people just go into interrogation and people might think, Oh, you're just there to, you know, get the confession or whatever. But the level of um just all the little things that you have to do. And I was like, you you in the book there was like you got the volunteer in the police station to come up and give you a hug before you know, right you know you're standing next to the person you're about to interrogate, you get someone to come up and give you a hug, say, Oh, you know, you're Such a great guy. Thanks for doing this. And just like little psychological tricks.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Yeah, there's you know, and and y you know, it some of it's Chaldini, influence principles. And and the thing is, I'm always careful about you know, the word interrogation has such a baggage negative connotation to it. Um, and rightfully so, because it's been misused. I mean, there's false confessions out there. So I always try to say, Chris, uh, that I'm always there to get the truth. And many, many people I talk to are truthful. And they had nothing to do with what they were accused of. And that's the greatest day that I have when somebody's accused of something, and I can come in and I can provide them an opportunity to be honest and we can we can prove that out. But yeah, there are times where I want to set the stage and I want to prime an environment as best I can so that that person sees me with that halo. And in this situation you're talking about, it was somebody that was very anti-law enforcement. And I didn't know if this individual had committed the murder or not. But by having the dispatcher come in and give me a hug and say, hey, Brad, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. But the individual that I was about to talk to saw this happen. So whether he was guilty or innocent, he's gonna view me as a good person. And as a result, uh that priming is very effective. And we'll do that a lot of times where if I get you something to drink, if I get you something to eat, if I offer you the bathroom, one, that's what friends do. When you go over to a friend's house, what do they do? Can I get you something to eat? Can I get something to drink? Too many people think this good cup, bad cup. No, I'm I'm good cup, great cup. I I I want to be I want to be your buddy. That's the reference I use, right? Uh you know, in the in the book, we talk about you you blame other people for those actions, you understand the motivations for why they did it. Um, you diminish the impact, not the culpability. You demonstrate tactical empathy through telling stories and you focus on the why and not the what. You be their buddy. And you can almost do that in any situation, is you hate the sin, but you love the sinner. Um, I truly feel like a lot of times people say to me, Man, you should be a priest, you should be a counselor. These are bad guys that just admitted to something, and they're respectful because a lot of people know they did that bad thing and they truly want to get it off their chest. And all I'm doing is just being the person that's allowing them to do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, it's really interesting. I it's this like even going through the book again, like it's just almost the stake sometimes. And the metaphor that I had in my mind is like you go into a room and sitting across from you is the, you know, um person you're going to be uh interviewing, interrogating. And it's almost like uh I when I was reading, I was like, there's almost like a uh a safe, like a really complicated safe. And you've got to use all these really delicate little, very careful maneuvers. And if you get it wrong, the the permanent bolt shuts in, and then that's it closed. Like you've you you're not getting anything from that person ever again. You might as well give up. Yeah, and there's even situations with your colleagues where that happened.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Yeah, and that happens where you show a sour face to somebody when they start making a disclosure. I had a child molester that uh, you know, he made one horrific, horrific disclosure. And I just took the mask off for a second and I just furrowed my brow. And you have to understand the child molesters, if if you're talking true pedophilia, uh individuals that are drawn to pre-prubescent boys or girls, these individuals are masters at controlling an environment, at grooming a situation, at grooming a person. And so they are very adept at looking at your reaction. So I really have to be very, very careful about what I'm putting out into the world. So many people focus on body language as, oh, what's Chris doing right now? Is it deception? Is it this? Is he comfortable? They don't realize what they're injecting into the equation with with their body language. So I have to be very, very uh positive in my body language so it's not viewed as me being an adversary.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Yeah, absolutely. Um, obviously on this show, we love to ask guests to come on and share just one of the most significant standout stories of their career that uh that really sort of sticks in their mind as something significant. So we talked a little bit about before, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind sort of giving us the context of that story and and how it how it played out.

The King Of Counterfeit: Part I

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah, so uh basically, first case on the job. Uh 1999, I'm in the counterfeit squad, and I get this case handed down by my supervisor saying, hey, we're kind of getting hit with these notes. They're a little unique in that they're kind of glued together, which you think counterfeit, glued together. Well, what this counterfeiter was doing was operating on kind of shortcut heuristics that humans have, right? We le we try to make our our ability to do things, we try to have little mental shortcuts. And what this counterfeiter was doing is he realized with the big head bills, the 1996 bills, he realized that, hey, what do people do? They hold them up to see if there is a watermark, to see if the head watermark is there, and they look at the color shifting ink and they see if the counterfeit pen works, if it notates on it. And he was able to kind of reverse engineer the bill and be like, wow, if I don't have to have the best quality bill, if I can just account for those three kind of mental shortcuts. And that's kind of what he did is it was one of these things where you know we're looking at the paper, we're trying to figure it out. It looks almost like yellow page paper type thing, which is a little bit thinner than U.S. currency. And US currency is 75% cotton, 25% linen. The way it's printed, the black is the black ink is laid on top. Uh, it's called Intalgo printing, and the green is actually driven into the note, uh, and it's called typographic. So you we've got all these things working where you've got the people that make the paper that has the watermark in it, it's got color shifting ink, it's got uh, you know, uh UV features on it, and then other features we can't discuss. But he really, I don't want to say he was ahead of his time, but he he just understood human behavior. And when he would pass, when you'd interview the tellers, they would say, you know, he would always use different serial numbers, he would engage them in conversation, so he'd kind of take their uh attention span off of it. He would build rapport with them, and what he would do is he would never do it around the Chicago area, he would do it up the interstate, and then he would move towards Chicago. So you're always pretty smart to not uh, you know, where you lay your head, you're not engaging in those type of activities. So for about a year and a half, I don't know, we probably had five, six hundred thousand dollars and passes associated with what we believed to be his note. And we just never caught him. All I knew is I I knew his name was art. That's all I knew, right? I had a basic uh basic description, and anybody that had worked with him would basically say, wow, he's a very uh meticulous individual. He's a very proud individual. He thinks that his counterfeit is truly like art. And so that's all I really knew about him. So I didn't know how I was going to use that. But one random night, I think it was December uh 2002-ish, roughly, 2001, uh, he got picked up at a local hotel in Chicago. And the duty agent got the phone call and he ran the serial numbers and he realized, oh shoot, that's Brad's case. He gave me a call at home and I drove there, and he was uh in the near north side of Chicago, being held in custody there with his uh a relative of his. So I'm like, man, I I'm a snot-nosed kid. This is a big time counterfeiter. How am I gonna kind of, you know, uh uh get this guy to like me? And I wanted to play to the ego. So what I did is uh instead of actually drove in, drove, I think I drove in in my K car, my Plymouth K car from 1989, whatever it was, uh, you know, beat up car. Um I told him I flew in on the Gulf Stream and that this was priority number one for the Secret Service and uh some of the best counterfeit I'd ever seen. And you could just kind of see uh kind of sat up a little bit, you know. And yeah, I wanted to have him teach me, how's it done? Man, this is fascinating. You're the first person to do this. And, you know, it worked. He told us everything, and it uh seemed like we had it, the case put down, but uh there was a little bit of a legal issue with how the uh local police department took him into custody there at the hotel. So he got released. And he immediately went to Alaska. And here's where the kind of sad part of the story kicks in is counterfeiters in general are very hard to stop their own. They're always looking for that, that, that next high. They're always looking for better counterfeit. They want to make the perfect counterfeit, so their recidivism rate is extremely high. And this is what happened. I mean, he got off on a technicality and he goes to Alaska. He he meets his dad, and it's kind of sad because he had been separated from his dad a little bit, and they start hanging out, and the dad gets involved in the family business and is passing some counterfeit money and gets arrested by our agents, Secret Service agents in Alaska. And his dad actually agrees to participate against his son. And so you can imagine being without your son, you're being out without your father for years, and then you go to meet him and then he snitches on you. And he got several years, I think three years. And uh, I just remember him telling me when I interrogated him the first time that, you know, I'm gonna get a book deal and I'm gonna be famous and I'm gonna get a movie. And we're like, okay, all right, sure. Well, evidently he wrote the book while he was in jail and uh he submitted the the manuscripts and it got picked up right as he got out, it got picked up by Rolling Stone, and Jason Kirsten was the uh the author of it, who ultimately authored the two books. But he wrote this uh, I don't know, eight or nine page spread in Rolling Stone magazine with his face on a hundred dollar bill. And the reason I knew about it was a buddy called me and said, You've got to go to Union Station bookstore and you've got to go get the Rolling Stone. And I did, and there I was, and I opened it up, and there's Art's face, Arthur Williams Jr.'s face on a hundred dollar bill. And I was like, ah man. And of course, in the article, he said, I didn't confess to those agents. And I'm like, man, you don't even give me credit. Um, but they they coined him the king of counterfeit. And uh knowing counterfeiters and the recidivism rate, we're like, dude, he's not stopping. So we went back to uh the field office and we immediately will talk to the custodian, the evidence custodian that takes all our counterfeit in, and there his notes were back. And basically what he was doing is he was taking a, and without getting into many specifics, he was taking a kind of paper that he was getting donated uh saying he was a teacher, and he was using that and he was putting certain things on the paper that tried to foil the counterfeit detection pen. He was using tracing paper to put the uh watermark, he was uh using automobile color shifting ink that was different than U.S. shifting ink, but people had these mental shortcuts, and then he was gluing it together. And he was back at it doing it again because it had worked before. So we uh we set back on him, we started working, getting informants, doing buys and stuff like that. And our counter surveillance team was watching him one day, and they see his son, uh, I think he was 15 at the time, run out of the apartment that they were living in, and he had, I think,$10,000 of counterfeit, and a Chicago police car was coming by, and he literally ran up and threw$10,000 of counterfeit on the hood of the car. Very poor choice, right? Very, very poor choice. So obviously they, you know, and our people came out of roll and uh went and did a consent search on the house and found everything. And Art was there, and his son was there, R Jr. and uh, or Art III, I believe. And it was one of those things where I gotta buy myself some time now because once again, I gotta play to the ego. So I told him I flew in on the next model up Gulfstream, the Gulfstream 5 or whatever was the latest model. So I waited a couple hours and uh I interrogated the son, and the son snitched on his dad, you know, which is uh was heartbreaking, I think, for uh art as well, because within the space of two or three years, now he's got his father, now he's got his son both snitching on him. And to his credit, both times, he he took it. He took it like a champ. He didn't point fingers at anybody else, he took full responsibility. So for that, I give him major props. And um he admitted in his statement to doing about$8 million, whether that's the truth or not, that's what he admitted to. But one of the things that really I think got him to feel comfortable again is I brought down the magazine, the Rolling Stone magazine, and I asked him, I played fanboy, and I said, Would you mind autographing this for me? And he did, and I still have it. He's you know, to Brad, the greatest Secret Service agent, you got me, Arthur Williams Jr. And uh then he signed his confession. And it's it's one of those things where you kind of gotta think outside the box sometimes. But I did respect him because he's one of those individuals that one, he took it like a champ, he was respectful, he didn't throw his family under the bus when he could have, even though that that did happen to him. And he's one of those people where if life circumstance would have been different, you know, if he'd have been in a different environment growing up, he probably would have been a very successful whatever. And the reason I can say that is because he got eight years in federal prison, his son ultimately got arrested by the Secret Service again, and they were actually roommates in the same jail in Arkansas. And the federal system is a little bit better, I think, in providing services and opportunities for inmates to, you know, get another skill. And he took up painting, and now he's a world-famous painter, and he's since reached out to me uh to try to connect. And uh, you know, I've definitely had conversations with him just uh because I respect you know what he's done is he's an excellent artist now. So people can change, which is very rare. Usually, especially it when we get up into our late, mid, mid to late 20s, it's very, very hard for people to change. Usually they or stay consistent. So I respected that and uh you know the fact that he's an artist, he's got two books written after him, and uh interesting individual.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

I mean, what what was that feeling? I mean, it could be either Arthur Williams Judy or anyone that you they have that moment where they crack and go, Okay, I did it, I'll sign the confession. Like, what do you what do you feel when that happens?

SPEAKER_02 44:18

I mean, it's a small victory, I'm not gonna lie, but I think it habituates a little bit over time. I think the first couple of times that that those types of things happened, I mean, you were like, wow, you know, like yes. And then then you almost have to create that as an expectation for yourself, because if you don't, um, you know, it's it's you you raise the bar on yourself and you almost create it as that's my goal, that's my expectation. And if I don't get it, I'm I'm pissed off. But but once again, I think some of truly some of my greatest um times on this job were vindicating um, you know, individuals uh that had been either falsely accused or you know, it was just kind of a 50-50 shot uh as far as uh, you know, let's say uh a child had died and it could have been the mom or it could have been the dad that did it. I mean, if you vindicate one, it's probably gonna mean that the other person did it. Um so uh to me, that's I I think I got more out of that, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

But like just an accounter to that, you know, people like psychopaths, sociopaths, obviously they are very much people too. But when you're you must have come across people like that before when you're interrogating them. Are they you approach that whole situation differently or just the same way?

SPEAKER_02 45:28

Yeah, it's it's slightly different. I mean, it's very hard. You know, you see a lot of TikTok videos on people that are like, this is how you tell a narcissist, this is how you tell a psychopath. Man, it's very difficult. I mean, you need a clinical psychologist, multiple interactions. A lot of people are just looking for clicks to say, look for this, look for that. And I think it's very dangerous to say that you can, it's just like the what we did with the two truths and a lie. Um, you know, you're you're you're as wrong as much as you are right a lot of times in these types of situations. But I have met three evil people in my life. When I say evil, I mean it wasn't situational factors. It wasn't upbringing, it was uh they're they're evil. And if they have an opportunity to offend, they will offend. And one in particular, I remember him admitting at the age of 15 he committed a rape on a jogger in his neighborhood, and he's sitting on the front stoop of his porch and he describes it. This jogger is just running by. And within an instant, light bulb clicks, boom, he's off like that cheetah you you talked about. And it's just an on off there, there's no off switch for him. And there's three people that I talk to that are like that. There's most offenders that I talk to are situational offenders, where you know, the cloud storms, the perfect storm, you know, they may have higher propensity than other people, but anybody's capable of committing crime. Um, you have good people that that make mistakes, you have good people that go bad. Um, there's very few truly evil people out there, but unfortunately I've talked to some and you do treat them differently.

unknown 47:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

You've still got to keep that mask on, you know, the whole time. Yeah, as you said before that. That's all it must be must be hard, so much harder. Because you know, you you could as someone's a good person who did something bad. You you can keep the mask on a lot easier than someone who just looks at you and goes, No, I enjoy what I do. You know, that's that's a different story.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

No, that's there's people that literally said to me that's how they keep their sanity is by committing these horrific acts against children. That that that they they would go insane if they did not do this. And they I I I can't get too much into it as far as the things they said because it's probably not people don't need to hear that. Um, but for me, it would cause issues um because if I had a bad case like that, the next case I would work, I would be a little shorter uh because I'd still have some of that pent-up, disturbed feeling. Um, so I had to really, I had some great uh PhDs that would help us. We would have counseling sessions where we talk to people about how to get coping mechanisms for this so we could come into the next case and not have it be this um this trauma, you know. A lot of times then the child sexual abuse material, I'd never had to view it, but a lot of people in this space really have to get counseling because you can't unsee an image and you can't unhear a confession about some of this stuff. So what I would do is I'd wear the same shirt on every operation. And kind of like a medical examiner would do is when they're done doing that medical exam or that autopsy, they would, you know, leave their, you know, their you know, uniform there so they wouldn't take it home. So for me, I would leave it in the car, and then the next day I'd come out and I'd launder it. I'd play a video game in the driveway when I got home to disassociate. So when I crossed that threshold, right? I would never write my reports at home. So uh really trying to keep that work-life balance uh so that you wouldn't bring it, you know, back to the house, to the relationship.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Yeah, I can't even imagine the level of um trauma that some of some of your colleagues have had to go through. And um absolutely. Yeah. Um so I guess uh in saying about these kind of different people, good, bad, I mean, this might be a big question, but at the end of your career, I mean you're still working, I know you're retired from Secret Service, but you're still still working, but what what have you learned about humanity, you know, um you know, from from all your time doing interrogations and dealing with people, even in protective services, and have you learned uh do you think you've learned much more than um than maybe another career?

The King Of Counterfeit: Part II

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Yeah, I think we definitely, you know, discussed it earlier is that um for me, being in and and I say we're an apolitical organization, we all have our own thought process, right? But I would say that the Secret Service really showed me how quickly people can change their opinions. And what I mean by that is you will see it, like so I was, let's say, um moderate to a little liberal coming out of college, and I get my first job and you know, here with the Secret Service and uh first big real job, career job. And within a year, I got assigned to the Bush uh candidacy when he was running as governor, and obviously he was a Republican. And when you hear the same stump speech four times a day for three weeks, and then you take three weeks off, and then you come back and you hear it the same speech four weeks on, four weeks on, and you're around like-minded people and you're around the crowd, and they're they'd hear these messages, and you'd be amazed. You're like, oh, I'm a Republican now. And vice versa, you'd see people that were on the other candidate that would be conservative, and they'd be like, so people are malleable based upon their surroundings. Um, it's so it's amazing how those echo chambers and and it talks about how things are today is that on a campaign, you're in an echo chamber. Um, and the other thing that it taught me is that there's just some really, really good people that, you know, it's it's crazy to think like Bush 41 was a war hero. He jumped out of a plane against his will at 20 years old, shot down over Chichijima, and just was fortunate enough to land a few hundred meters away from the USS Finback that was able to pick him up. He goes on, successful businessman, CIA director, head of the RNC, vice president, president, just a true hero. And he was somebody that was, once again, he was political to a point, but he would do things that, you know, you know, when he said no new taxes, uh, that hurt him obviously politically when he went against that. But the way he viewed it was I was making a good deal for the American people. You will never see that very much anymore. Is that um, I mean, even then, he went across the aisle and worked with Clinton uh for tsunami relief, and they became very good friends. And the temperature in this country now is you just don't see a lot of that people reaching across the aisle, especially here now. You see this in the uh with the government shutdown, is just when you're in an echo chamber on both sides, that's the only where do you look for your information? You look for it from the people that have like-minded views. Yeah, it's very rare do we get information from the other side. So, what I've tried to take from all that, if I can bring it full circle, is I found that I try to look at the other person's perspective because they did that bad thing, okay, uh, because they thought it was in their best interest. And if I look at it from my perspective and think that's crazy, you're crazy, you're a horrible person, we're never gonna connect, just like both political parties aren't. So it's really taught me to kind of be center, uh, to look at both sides, to try to, you know, I get all my news from uh, you know, various news feeds that are completely non-biased, so that I can make up my own opinion and I can have the facts to talk to either side. So that's probably what I've learned is being around Israelis, being around Iranians, being around people in Bangladesh, all over the world is people are people. There's good people on both sides. And uh be very careful about putting horns and halos on people too quickly.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

It's really it's it's a it's a skill that I've learned in my career as well, is is to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. You know, having it's that difference between empathy and sympathy in some cases, right? You know, it's kind of um Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

Um there's a lot of sympathy out there. Very few people have tactical empathy, though.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

Yeah, absolutely. Um and just a sort of final question. Um, for anyone that wants to follow in your footsteps, either um, you know, to get into the Secret Service or maybe for our international listeners to get into, you know, yeah, law enforcement or interrogation, what kind of advice have you got for them?

SPEAKER_02 53:38

Yeah, so I mean we long term and short term. So, short term, the Secret Service is hiring a lot of people right now, a lot of good people. Uh, after uh, you know, a lot of people like me got hired in the early 2000s, and and we got old and we retired. And uh so they obviously need some new blood and uh they're expanding significantly and they've got a lot of great incentives. So I'm not here, I'm no longer with the Secret Service, and I'm here to be re- their recruiter, but uh Secretservice.gov, uh they're hiring a lot of people right now. So um I would really like it to be left in good hands with some really motivated people. Saying that, be honest on your application forms when you apply because you're gonna have to take a polygraph. And uh we can we can talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly about polygraph, but everything comes down to you being honest on that application. So uh they have a whole person concept. We understand there's not perfect people, but we just need you to be perfectly honest. If you do that, you're gonna be uh in good hands, uh no doubt. So um it was a great ride, and I love the organization and I want it to be left in good hands. So if there's people out there that are interested in it, do that. Um uh as far as the long-term goals there, I would say they take people from all, not just walks of life, but uh they take people from all different uh backgrounds. So just because you're uh they got a bit a business major, you're into accounting, um, don't just get criminal justice because uh that that you're pigeonholing yourself potentially. So uh just in case you're not a criminal justice major, realize we hire people from all different college degrees. So military law enforcement and people that have done neither one of those. Um that would be my that would be, I guess, my answer as far as getting into the organization.

SPEAKER_00 55:17

That's fascinating. I didn't I I I assumed you'd have to be in law enforcement, military, some kind of aspect, but it's fascinating to know that they would take a you know business major grad and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

Yeah. I mean they it's a six-month training academy. And sometimes by not being in law enforcement, you have you bring different perspectives. You know, you may have skill sets that uh, you know, if uh if you're an accountant, like a lot of our cases are financial crime cases, or that attention to detail may be very effective on a protective advance. Uh so sometimes just being a police officer or being in the military, yeah, those are great, unbelievable tools. And and historically it's served us very, very well. But I think our training academy does a great job of it training people up that maybe don't have that skill set.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

And and you did mention, we haven't actually in this conversation talked about polygraph much. Um, but um you mentioned it just there. And I guess there is a stigma, and you probably always have to deal with it in interviews that uh polygraphs are are not perfect. And I said if you're gonna go into join the Secret Service, you're gonna have to take a polygraph. Um the I guessing someone who uses it as a tool regularly, can you say it's reliable? How reliable is it?

SPEAKER_02 56:28

Yeah, so I I like to view it like this because Chris, usually when I uh travel, if I travel at work, if I'm traveling armed from one place to the other, I have to check in with the pilot and we'll be chatting real quick, you know, and the pilot will be, where are you going? What are you doing? I'm going to do some polygraphs and such and such. Polygraph? Man, I heard those things don't work, and I I heard uh you could beat them. And so I handle it a couple different ways. I said, Well, magnetometers aren't perfect either, but there's 300 people about to get on this plane as a result of going through a magnetometer, and what happens? People either don't go through the magnetometer because or they don't bring something through because they're afraid it's gonna catch them. It's the same thing with polygraph. It's not perfect, but it catches a lot of things. It's the best tool that we have, it's the best mousetrap we have, and it does keep a lot of people from applying for fear of they're gonna catch me doing that thing. And as far as beating it, um, the the way I like to say it is uh I'll tell the pilot, I'll like, hey, could you fly a 727 if you just read the manual? And they're like, it'd be very difficult. I said, thousand-page manual? Yeah, that's about right. I said, so people go online and they go down a rabbit hole and they read all this stuff about polygraph. And they're like, okay, do this, do that, whatever the case may be. Do you think we don't read that too? And would an organization like FBI, CIA, Secret Service, if the instrument was that easy to beat, as they say online, would we still use that instrument? I mean, if the magnetometer didn't work, would TSA use it? No, right? Yeah. So, and then I say, look, okay, so you think you know how you can beat the polygraph? I asked the pilot, I said, okay, they've read the manual, you think you know how you can fly the plane, but let's say we covered up the windows. And let's say we took the instrument panel and everything went black. Now fly the plane. What would be the problem? Well, I don't know much how rudder to use and I don't know what to steer, and I don't know about the flaps, so you'd crash the plane, right? Yeah. Because you don't know what I see, and you don't know how much inputs or not inputs for whatever you're doing is affecting you. And we know what normal physiology is, and we know what normal physiology isn't because we do this every day. If you take your car into a mechanic, he probably knows what's going on under the hood. We know what's going under the hood. You don't. So, my best advice get a good night's sleep, be honest on your application forms, eat a good breakfast, come in, bury your soul, and chances are you're gonna pass your polygraph. Many, many poor more people um try to do things that affect the outcome of the examination, get caught than people that would have been a false positive. And it you you can I can scream it from the mountaintops, and people just say, Ah, you're just a cheerleader, you're a polygraph acolyte, you're just saying those things because you're a polygraph examiner. I'm like, okay. I'm not a polygraph examiner right now. I'm telling you, you would be better served to put this stuff down on your application forms to say, I did that bad thing. Now, to a point, obviously. Um, but if you've done something minor in your past, if you've got some minor drug use, most of these organizations have time restrictions on this type of stuff. And they're like, hey, okay, you did marijuana three years ago, put it down, no big deal. And you fly through it. Whereas that wasn't the case 20 years ago. So, whole person concept, trust the process, and don't try to alter it. Because it'd be like if you water down your urine trying to beat a urinalysis test, what's the employer gonna say? You're hiding something. It's the same thing if you try to mess with the polygraph. So uh don't try to do that. It's typically not gonna go well for you.

SPEAKER_00 59:52

Awesome, great advice. Thank you, Brad. Um, uh at the end, I like to, you know, obviously plug whatever you've got going. You've got a book coming out. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Vindication, Evil, And Coping

SPEAKER_02 1:00:01

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Chris. Yeah, got a book called Tell Me Everything and uh was writing a law enforcement book on how detectives and patrolmen, so on and so forth could increase their communication styles in law enforcement. And was blessed to have an editor, Matt Holt, and his company and distributed through uh Simon and Schuster kind of say, Hey, this is a communication book and kind of brought it out. So parents, teachers, coaches, whatever the case may be, could use it. And I think it really hit on that as far as the life cycle of a conversation. How do we prepare for it? How do we start it? How do we continue it? How do we determine if somebody's not being honest with us? And then um if somebody chooses to be dishonest with us, how can we ethically without hurting a friendship get them to make that disclosure to us? Um so that was the nexus of it. And uh, if people want to contact me, uh bradleybeeler.com is uh kind of the best way. Uh or uh I love the socials, uh Brad Beeler 1865. That's the year the Secret Service was founded on Instagram and LinkedIn. I try to put a lot of content on there as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:05

Awesome. And I I've had a chance to read the an advanced copy of the book, and it's it's fantastic. It's really I should say it's really useful for just anyone who you know it's great stories from your whole career laced through it, but it's also like practical skills that people can use, whether they're a teacher or a CEO or a parent.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:22

Thank you. That means a lot, Chris. You've been around, you've seen the world. I mean, you've seen it all. So your your uh your endorsement means a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

No pleasure, man. Listen, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. It's been such a fun conversation. Thank you, Chris. And that's a wrap on this week's episode. A huge thanks again to Brad for sharing his stories with me. And of course, a huge thanks to you all for listening and watching as well. It means a lot to have you guys here each week with us. If you'd like to learn more about Brad, check out the links in the show notes below, or visit his episode page on Noordinarymonday.com. You'll also find photos, extras, and everything else from today's episode there as well. Alright, so I mentioned at the top of the show about some amazing bonus content from this episode. Later this week, I will post a bonus mini episode where I play a game of two truths and a lie with Brad. So hit subscribe now to find out if I can withstand his master interrogation skills. And as always, you can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and you can also join our No Ordinary Monday community on Facebook, where you can jump into the conversation, ask questions, and just generally be a part of the NOM crew. Alright, so time for this week's listener story segment. Um, if you'd like your story featured here on the show, head to the website and click the listener story page, or you can just email hello, H E L L O at NoOrdinary Monday.com. Alright, so this story is from an anonymous listener, uh, and I'm gonna read it out now. I was doing my rounds at a distribution warehouse around midnight. It was a huge place, echoey, dim, endless metal aisles. As I turned a corner, I saw a man standing perfectly still at the far end of the corridor. He was facing the wall. I called out, Sir, you're not supposed to be here. There's no movement. I got my radio and called it in, and then I started walking closer to the man. The whole time he didn't react. He just stood there absolutely motionless. It was terrifying. My heart was doing gymnastics. When I got close enough, I finally realized it wasn't a man. It was a life-size cardboard cutout from some promotional display. Someone had forgotten to put it back where it belonged. I swear I had lost two years of my life that night. When my supervisor found me laughing and swearing on the floor, he just said, Ah, so you've met Carl. Apparently they'd all been fooled by Carl, a cardboard man, at least once in their time there. That story is absolutely hilarious. I am a big fan of spooky stories, but I think I would genuinely be terrified in that kind of situation. Even though it wasn't real, I think my mind would go to a scary place first. So big respect for the uh the person sending this in uh for having the courage to go and check out uh what might have been a ghost or something else. Um I probably would have checked the cameras first, but um that's just me. Next week we shift gears into the world of music, but not in the way that you're imagining. My guest is Robert Emery, a world-class conductor, prodigy pianist, and a composer whose career has taken him everywhere from the Sydney Opera House to the Royal Abbott Hall to private stages that you and I will never see. And his no ordinary Monday story is absolutely unbelievable. He was flown by a billionaire to an undisclosed location for a private orchestral performance, and from the moment he arrived, everything spiraled into a surreal, vodka-fueled, opera singer-filled adventure straight out of a Hollywood script. It's chaotic and hilarious, and Robert tells it brilliantly. So hit subscribe and tune in next week for a story that you won't forget. If today's episode made your Monday just a little bit better, please click five stars and share the show with someone who would love it. It seems small, but it really does help us. We can grow, we can reach new listeners, and we can keep bringing you these extraordinary guests each week for free. This show is independently produced, hosted, and edited by me, Chris Baron. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great month, everyone, and we will see you next week.