0:00

explain to us what a fly

0:02

team is, FLY, right? Yep. So

0:04

basically it was like the fly

0:06

away team initially, but the

0:08

initial concept of it was when something

0:10

explodes overseas terrorism event to you

0:12

jump on an airplane and go and

0:14

manage that. push for the investigation

0:16

and everything. But what we found was,

0:19

if you do that, you're way

0:21

behind the curve. You're not there for

0:23

a day or so. So that

0:25

didn't work. What it evolved into was

0:27

us being pre -positioned in places that

0:29

were basically, so there wasn't a

0:31

lot of US presence. But

0:34

we needed to be there because

0:36

stuff was blowing up that was impacting

0:38

the US. And our job was

0:40

to make connections with the local intelligence

0:42

and law enforcement so that we're

0:44

in with them. I've

0:59

asked you this before, if you

1:01

knew Dale Watson, he was the

1:03

executive deputy director of counterterrorism back

1:05

then. And I think, I think

1:07

Dale retired in 2002. Yeah,

1:10

it was a name that I know I'm familiar

1:12

with. I know I've seen it on stuff, but

1:14

I definitely didn't know him. He's

1:16

a, in my book, he's a stud.

1:18

He was on episode 173 here

1:20

on Game of Crimes back in December

1:22

of last year on December 2nd.

1:24

But he was the lead of CT

1:26

counterterrorism. When 9 11

1:29

happened and poor guy,

1:31

he still carries that weight. He still can

1:33

burden. Just that would be a lot. He's

1:35

one of the sharpest men I've ever met.

1:37

I mean, just we, we worked together on

1:39

a, we did a Booz Allen contract together.

1:41

Actually it was with still team six. We

1:43

were going down to damn neck

1:45

Virginia and teaching a three day course,

1:47

but it wasn't, wasn't anything tactical. It's

1:50

classified, but mostly just about embassy life

1:52

and how everybody hates you. Be

1:54

quite honest with you. Wow,

1:57

so did well two years in

1:59

Pakistan and then what happened after

2:01

that? So Good question.

2:03

try to remember You're still in

2:05

the flyway teams, I think so

2:07

still in the fly team and

2:10

Came back from Pakistan. I know

2:12

for a little while I was

2:14

while I was back in the

2:16

States I was on a joint

2:18

and joint interagency task force tracking

2:20

terrorists around the world and kind

2:22

of tracking them down, I guess,

2:24

would be the way to say

2:27

that. So I did

2:29

that for a little bit, but then

2:31

I went to Nigeria next is kind

2:33

of my next long term post. And

2:35

so did a few three months stints

2:37

through Nigeria and got to be all

2:39

over that place again. It was right

2:41

at kind of the beginning of Boko

2:43

Haram, which is a big terrorist group

2:46

in that region. And the US government

2:48

hadn't designated them as a terrorist organization.

2:50

So it was My job

2:52

was to go over and collect evidence and

2:54

intelligence to try to figure out are they

2:56

something that we should designate as something that

2:58

we should care about and spend our resources

3:00

on. So that was kind of cool that

3:03

I think my work directly led to them

3:05

being designated as a terrorist organization and unfortunately

3:07

they still exist, but that's that's the problem

3:09

with the Nigerian government rather than ours. Yeah,

3:11

what you just mentioned there, you're

3:15

It's being very humble about I guess be

3:17

a nice way to say it. I

3:19

think that was something I would be very

3:21

proud of that you help collect the

3:23

information that yes, they are and they're legit.

3:25

They're legitimately terrorists. And that was the

3:28

thing is are they basically just bad guys

3:30

doing bad stuff in Northern Nigeria that

3:32

we don't have to worry about? Or is

3:34

there a terrorism element to it that

3:36

would cause the US problems? And so one

3:38

of the things that I had to

3:40

do was to show that They

3:42

are connected to other groups like

3:44

al -Qaeda and Islamic Maghreb or al -Shabaab

3:46

or those and to make those

3:49

connections was the only way I could

3:51

do that was to Get up

3:53

there where they were doing the attacks

3:55

to collect evidence from the attacks

3:57

that would help make those linkages So

3:59

that was another kind of exciting

4:01

set of adventures running around northern Nigeria

4:03

in the middle of basically a

4:05

war zone. Dude! They ever sent

4:07

you in for psychological counseling? I mean, you're

4:09

going in some dangerous places. I thought the

4:11

fly teams, I thought, and I heard Dale

4:13

talk about this when we were doing our

4:15

classified briefings to the... development group down in

4:17

Seales, but I was under the impression that

4:19

you guys were based in the U .S. and

4:21

then when an event would happen, he's calling

4:24

you guys and they're putting you on jets

4:26

and you're flying off, you're flying away to

4:28

take care of where the issue was. But

4:30

it was more in a TDY type atmosphere,

4:32

not a PCS, a permanent change of station.

4:35

TDY, I mean, I was like TDY to Pakistan for two

4:37

years, so it's kind of a long TDY. Nigeria

4:40

was a little bit more manageable, but

4:42

so the original concept was, yeah, fly away

4:44

and respond to something, but that just

4:46

didn't work. So I had to change the

4:48

model and that actually had to do

4:50

with a lot of the guys who are

4:52

on the team before me. A

4:55

lot of them still on the team

4:57

with me when I got on it, but

4:59

they had recognized that and they done a

5:01

brilliant job of basically lobbying, saying, hey, we

5:03

provide more value if we're in Kenya than

5:05

if we're sitting in DC, right?

5:07

If we're in Kenya, we're actually doing stuff that benefits

5:09

the US government. If I'm in DC, I'm just learning

5:11

about Kenya, but I'm not there, right?

5:14

And that, the whole, that idea paid

5:16

off so many times. Like one

5:18

example was, and there's the World Cup

5:20

bombing in Kenya and Chad. Don't

5:22

remember what year that was, but we had

5:24

guys there who set

5:26

up evidence lockers and everything. So when something

5:29

like that did happen, the locals had

5:31

the materials and the knowledge and the ability

5:33

to properly collect the evidence and probably

5:35

maintain a chain of custody and everything, which

5:37

without the flight team guys doing that,

5:39

they wouldn't have had that ability, right? And

5:41

I was doing the same type of

5:43

thing in Nigeria where when a bomb would

5:45

go off in Nigeria, the Nigerian government

5:47

response was get the fire department there and

5:50

clean it up so it doesn't look

5:52

like anything happened. Destroy all the evidence as

5:54

quick as you can. That's

5:57

what they were doing. So the Nigerian bond

6:00

tax will help us be able to get

6:02

there and get stuff and get it in

6:04

a way that you can take it and

6:06

send it to TDAC, the terrorist explosive device

6:08

analysis center and have them look at it.

6:10

And so they were awesome at wanting to

6:12

do that. And so it's setting up that

6:14

capability. So when something did happen, we could

6:16

immediately, if I couldn't get there, they could

6:19

get there and collect the evidence. Wow.

6:22

That's, you know what, that's forward thinking.

6:25

Which is what we need to do rather

6:27

than being reactive all the time. You

6:29

can be somewhat proactive, right? So you're not

6:31

going to stop everything But at least

6:33

you can set yourself up better for when

6:35

something does happen after Nigeria. Did you

6:37

come back to the US? Yes,

6:39

I was on the flight team for maybe

6:41

another year after that and did a bunch of

6:43

shorter term things through Africa and Yemen and

6:45

the like. Yemen was cool because it was

6:48

right at the beginning of the war. So there's,

6:50

you look out from where we were working

6:52

with the Yemenis and see stuff on fire

6:54

and everything. That was, that was kind of cool.

6:56

But most people are looking at me and

6:58

you like, you two are stupid. You two

7:00

are crazy. Most people get away from stuff like

7:02

that. We look at it as, wow, this

7:04

is exciting. This is awesome. Where

7:06

else would I want to be?

7:09

Right right right there ground

7:11

zero when things I did that

7:13

the kind of bouncing around

7:15

for another year and Then I

7:17

got asked to come over

7:19

to the high value detainee interrogation

7:22

group the Higg for short

7:24

I'd actually in 2009 the Higg

7:26

was formed to figure out

7:28

how do we better talk to

7:30

terrorists and get useful information

7:32

from them, and then to lead

7:35

those interrogations. But 2009,

7:37

a guy named Faisal Shazad, he

7:39

tried to blow up Times Square, and

7:41

almost did. He had an entire car bomb

7:43

that he'd made. He just didn't quite... I

7:45

think his fuse was a little bit off

7:48

and his secondary explosive wasn't quite what it

7:50

should have been. So basically it smoked a

7:52

lot. The primary ones went off, but then

7:54

they caused the secondary to smoke. So we

7:56

got lucky, but he gets arrested ultimately. Somehow

7:58

he evades surveillance and is able to get

8:00

on an airplane before we arrest him, but

8:02

I wasn't part of that. But he gets

8:04

arrested. President Obama says, this new group that

8:06

I just formed, the HIG, I want them

8:09

leading this. And who wants to tell the

8:11

president, well, yeah, we've started, but we don't

8:13

have any interrogators or anybody on. the Hig

8:15

yet. So rather than tell him that, they

8:17

just said Colton flight team guy, you're now

8:19

the Hig interrogator, go to New York and

8:21

lead this thing. You

8:23

take it to go, which is

8:25

pretty much what it was. And there

8:28

were a couple of brilliant analysts

8:30

with me on it, but me and

8:32

another flight team guy go up

8:34

there to lead this thing. And I'm

8:36

sure you've interacted with New York

8:38

field office or with the equivalent. Yeah.

8:40

And so New York mentality, we

8:42

we own the world and you guys

8:44

work for us. And so

8:46

arriving in New York was unpleasant to say

8:48

the least because they wanted nothing to

8:50

do with us there, but finally talked my

8:52

way in and smoothed things over and

8:54

got to run that thing for days. But

8:57

so that was my introduction to the

8:59

Hague and I kind of stayed in touch

9:01

with them through the years as they

9:03

were doing their stuff. But in 2014, they

9:05

said, Hey, Will you come over and

9:07

so there's the academic side to me and

9:09

they're like, will you come over and

9:11

take all this research that we've done and

9:13

make sense of it for us? How

9:15

do we actually use this to talk to

9:17

people? And then how do we train

9:20

it to other people? So I got brought

9:22

over still as an interrogation team leader,

9:24

but also as the guy who's going to

9:26

take all this research and figure out

9:28

what it means about talking to guys who

9:30

really don't want to talk to us.

9:32

So that became my next job. Well,

9:35

that HIG thing, now that's not just

9:37

straight out bureau. That's Intel community, right?

9:39

Yep. There's a joint effort

9:41

between FBI CIA and

9:43

DOD. Yes. I

9:45

can't imagine the, uh, snub

9:48

that you got when you got there. Yeah,

9:50

it was, I mean, to create

9:52

a new organization from three different

9:55

organizations that don't always get along

9:57

very well. And then say, now

9:59

you're going to work to nicely

10:01

together. Yeah, that didn't work. Very

10:03

well at all.

10:05

But still doesn't. But

10:08

we tried. Yeah. And

10:10

before you go into your next phase, I

10:12

saw him, I think I saw this on

10:14

LinkedIn where you were the lead on a

10:16

terrorism investigation at Fort Hood and as well

10:18

as the Boston bombing. Yeah. So

10:20

one of the leads, I won't claim

10:22

to be the lead on him, but with

10:24

Fort Hood, that was actually kind of

10:26

funny because that was. Times

10:30

Square bombing might have been 2010, but Fort

10:32

Hood was 2009 and I was in flight

10:34

team training. So you get to the flight

10:36

team and you go through six months of

10:38

pretty intensive training. I

10:40

got hypothermia twice during

10:42

it. So heat

10:44

exhaustion another time and broke some

10:46

ribs and stuff. So it's fun. difficult

10:49

training kind of fun. A little challenging.

10:52

Yeah, a little challenging. And we have, I'm

10:54

sure every fly team group that came in

10:56

was equally motivated, but my team was definitely

10:58

motivated. So we just push each other harder

11:00

and harder. How extreme can we get in

11:02

this? Um, it's led to almost dying a

11:04

few times probably, but it was worth it.

11:06

But I could go anywhere in the world

11:08

down be I'll be fine. Yep. It's

11:10

not going to be that bad. But I'm in

11:12

flight team training and I'm We were actually doing

11:14

something in Northern Virginia at Quantico, so I was

11:16

driving back to my house from Quantico, and I

11:18

get a phone call, and there's the unit chief

11:20

for the flight team. You see, oh, where are

11:23

you? I'm driving to my house. All right, you

11:25

got a bag with you? Yeah? He

11:27

said, all right, go to Manassas Airport. There's a plane there.

11:29

Y 'all are going to get on it, and you're going to

11:31

fly to Fort Hood. There's just been a shooting there. And

11:34

so I'm like, all right, so I actually had to

11:36

swing by the office and get a bunch of crime

11:38

scene stuff and grab it and throw it in

11:40

my car and get to the airport. get

11:43

to Fort Hood and I Don't

11:45

remember it's like 14 people got killed

11:47

there. Maybe something like that. I

11:49

don't remember either Yeah, but get there

11:51

and they've removed the bodies, but

11:53

there's still just pools of blood everywhere,

11:55

but knock on CID but they

11:57

were Army criminal investigative group they were

11:59

they were trying to process the

12:02

crime scene and they were they were

12:04

gonna just Ruin most of the

12:06

evidence with what they were doing. So

12:08

I had I had to come

12:10

in and call timeout stop touching anything.

12:13

Let's Secure the scene do this

12:15

systematically and correctly and rather than

12:17

just running around picking up Shell

12:19

casings wherever they are Which makes

12:21

you very popular amongst everybody when

12:23

you do that. Yeah Again, I'm

12:25

really not trying to be the

12:27

headquarters guy taking over stuff But

12:29

we do have to do this

12:31

right so my job there initially

12:33

was to secure the scene,

12:35

protect it, knowing that then

12:38

we'd have a full bureau response

12:40

with our evidence response team

12:42

so that we can do everything

12:44

right systematically. And

12:46

so I did that. And once

12:48

the ERT evidence response team shows

12:50

up, I got, okay, you guys

12:52

got this, let's see what else

12:55

needs to be done. And I

12:57

go into their, basically their command

12:59

post and they've got all this

13:01

intel coming in and It's

13:03

just piling up in a box. Nobody's

13:05

doing anything with it and they did a

13:07

search one on my god Just spacing

13:09

out the guy's name who did it I'm

13:11

with you. I don't remember either embarrassing

13:14

But did a search one. I'll figure it

13:16

out in a minute. We did a

13:18

search one on his house and Then they

13:20

put all the stuff in a supply

13:22

closet and it's just sitting there So we

13:24

have all this stuff that we should

13:26

be following up on so then I just

13:29

took that over basically and said, okay,

13:31

here's my new job is to get people

13:33

out following up on all these leads

13:35

that are piling up in this box and

13:37

analyze what did we get from his

13:39

house and what do we need to follow

13:41

up on that? At the

13:43

time, something like that happens. Nidal

13:47

Hasan, Major Nidal Hasan. There you

13:49

go. I knew it would come if I

13:51

stopped thinking about it. But

13:54

we didn't know if... Hassan

13:56

had done this alone or if there are

13:58

other people involved, you know, like nearly every

14:00

mass shooting like that, the initial reports are

14:02

there are two gunmen. It usually comes down

14:04

to there's one and people are just hearing

14:06

echoes or just mishearing. But still

14:08

didn't know. And you don't know if somebody else helped

14:10

him plan it or the like. So got to

14:12

follow up on all the leads and be sure. Or

14:14

if there is somebody else, find them. That

14:17

became my role for a few days

14:19

running that and we had another another

14:21

couple guys on the flight team there

14:24

to interview his son Unfortunately, he was

14:26

in a coma the entire time because

14:28

he'd been shot in the Mm -hmm.

14:30

So did he die or he go

14:32

to prison now? He's still in prison.

14:34

He's I can't remember if they sentenced

14:36

him to death or not But he

14:38

he's still alive. I know that yeah

14:40

in a wheelchair, I think And

14:42

then the, what was your role in the

14:44

Boston bombing? We had Ed Davis on here a

14:47

few years ago talking about the Boston bombing. Yeah.

14:49

So it was actually kind of

14:51

similar and absolutely again, no knock on

14:53

the Boston field division, but it

14:55

was just like Fort Hood, something happens

14:57

in your backyard. You were certain

14:59

that you have it under control, but

15:02

you don't see all the things

15:04

you're missing basically. And Boston bombing happens

15:06

are the unit chief of the

15:08

fly team. He's trying to say, we

15:10

need to go. We need to

15:12

go. This is what we do. And

15:15

headquarters in Boston are saying, no, now that

15:17

Boston has it under control. And finally, our unit

15:19

chief says, we're going to Boston. And

15:21

we get in our cars and

15:23

we actually drive lights and sirens from

15:25

DC to Boston, which was as

15:28

fast as we could, which was pretty

15:30

fun. Except terrifying

15:32

when you're driving on the shoulder of a

15:34

highway and all of a sudden like.

15:36

the jersey wall like moves over two feet

15:38

and then. But

15:42

so we go up to Boston

15:44

and I think we get there

15:46

right about the time the older

15:48

brother was killed and still looking

15:50

for the younger one and find

15:52

out he's in the boat and

15:54

get over to the boat and

15:56

we get there and the hostage

15:58

negotiation unit is there and they're

16:00

doing a. They're actually doing a

16:02

fantastic job getting him to communicate

16:04

and talk. But the boat is

16:06

surrounded by probably a hundred law

16:08

enforcement guys from every agency you

16:10

can think of. And I literally

16:12

was, we're all in a circle,

16:14

guys, with guns pointed across the

16:16

circle. This seems like a really

16:18

bad plan. So I found an

16:20

area next to this house that

16:22

the boat was in. I'm just

16:24

going to stay out of the

16:26

way of as much gunfire as

16:28

I can. Something goes

16:30

bad. And sure enough, I think

16:32

it was a guy from

16:34

them. Massachusetts Transportation Police or something

16:36

done away, but pretty sure

16:39

gets an itchy finger and fires

16:41

off around and then hundreds

16:43

of rounds are going off. Yeah,

16:49

exactly. One guy goes, one guy goes and

16:51

then pretty soon it says full on.

16:53

Whatever the kid's name was, who's in the

16:55

boat gets shot through the jaw. Yeah,

16:58

Joe Karrs and I have, thanks. So

17:01

Joe Karr gets shot through the jaws.

17:03

We get him out of the boat,

17:05

couple of flight team guys actually get

17:07

some tourniquets on him and get him

17:09

to the hospital. Then my role there

17:11

becomes, again, secure the crime scene and

17:13

find out. what he has written inside

17:15

the boat because there were some reports

17:17

that there's writing inside the boat and

17:19

he'd in his blood basically written his

17:21

manifesto kind of a brief manifesto but

17:23

but it was secure the crime scene

17:25

and that was that was actually really

17:27

embarrassing at some point the sun starts

17:29

to come up the next morning and

17:31

neighbors are coming over carrying rounds in

17:33

their hands and hey I found this

17:35

in my bathroom do you want it

17:37

And I'm so happy we did not

17:39

kill anybody in that process. It was

17:41

just by the grace of God, they

17:43

survived. Yeah. Wow. Holy

17:46

cow. Now, and

17:48

I forget what year that was.

17:51

That would have been 2012, I think. Somewhere

17:53

around was thinking. So

17:55

then, and then you go to the Hig

17:58

in 14, is that correct? So did you stay

18:00

in the Hig until you retired? Yeah,

18:02

I ended up doing so. I was

18:04

thinking I'd go. do one last

18:06

kind of exciting thing in the bureau. But

18:08

I got to the Higg and found

18:10

I absolutely loved it. And I was getting

18:12

to still travel all over the world

18:14

and do fun stuff. And at

18:17

that point, just also just fell in

18:19

love with the research and kind of

18:21

that academic part of me came back

18:23

and I was, this is cool. We're

18:25

leading kind of the world right now

18:27

and figuring out how do we most

18:29

effectively talk to people and how do

18:31

we not break things in the process,

18:33

basically. That just became really

18:35

fun and developed some interview specialties while

18:37

I was on the Higgs. I still

18:39

got to go and do those. One

18:41

of those was, alright, the FBI sends

18:43

informants all over the world to collect

18:45

stuff for us, but it's not always

18:47

clear when they come back if they're

18:49

telling the truth or they're just manufacturing

18:51

stuff because it's what we want to

18:53

hear. And so there was that and

18:55

then there were handling problems. agents

18:58

not being able to really handle their

19:00

source very well. And the source is kind

19:02

of going out of bounds more than

19:04

they should be. And my job was to

19:06

go sit down with the sources and

19:08

talk to them for two, sometimes three days.

19:10

And to figure out is what they're

19:12

telling us true? One, and

19:15

that was where the HIG had done a lot

19:17

of research is how do we accurately detect deception?

19:19

Because most of the stuff we've been taught It's

19:21

just, unfortunately, wrong. All

19:23

the stuff I relied on throughout my whole

19:25

career and realized... Oh, geez. And

19:27

like, why am I so bad at detecting

19:29

deception? Oh, because everything I've been taught is wrong.

19:31

That's why. But we

19:33

did figure out a methodology that is

19:35

about 80 % to 90 % effective

19:37

in discerning truth from not truth. I'd

19:39

go out and I'd use that

19:42

talking to them, but then also just...

19:44

That having somebody else talking to

19:46

the source you're able to figure out

19:48

and kind of resolve a lot

19:50

of the handling problems as well That

19:52

actually became really fun because you

19:54

know FBI sources are Interesting weird unique

19:56

people and so getting to spend

19:58

two three days talking to them as

20:00

I was this is fun You

20:02

just get to learn cool stuff about

20:04

weird people who are able to

20:06

go to dangerous places for us and

20:08

I really like that part the

20:11

job But then also still interviewing terrorists

20:13

and around different places Now,

20:15

you retired from a bureau in

20:17

2020. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

20:19

Why'd you decide to retire? It

20:21

was June or July 2020, pandemics going

20:23

on and we weren't able to deploy

20:25

anymore on the HIG and they were

20:27

trying to figure out, well, can we

20:29

interview terrorists by Zoom or something? Well,

20:32

that doesn't sound any fun to me.

20:34

And then I'd been, I developed this whole

20:36

training program for the HIG and we've

20:38

been doing that all around the world with

20:40

all of our trusted partners. I'd got

20:42

to work closely with all the five eyes

20:44

to completely change their intelligence programs. And

20:46

I was absolutely loving it. And then pandemic

20:48

comes and I'd already sort of started

20:50

to think, okay, maybe within a year or

20:52

so, I'll need to retire just so

20:54

I can go do something new. But

20:57

pandemic hit and there's, we need you to design a bunch

20:59

of online training for us. And I was like, yeah, or

21:02

an eligible to retire. And

21:05

I'm, and we, we'd been

21:07

looking for places to live.

21:09

And we found this 75

21:11

acres in New Hampshire. And

21:14

we're buying that, I'm retiring, we're moving

21:16

to New Hampshire. Wow. That's,

21:18

uh, Now you didn't. So

21:20

when you retired, you didn't really retire though,

21:22

did you? Uh, I haven't been very good

21:24

at retiring to be honest. Me

21:26

either. So you were, did you go to

21:28

New England college first or did you start

21:30

your own private company first? Um, I think

21:32

I started my own company before I retired.

21:35

I actually had to have a tumor removed

21:37

from my spine. So, and then part of

21:39

my spine fused back together and everything. But

21:41

so for. A couple weeks as well, I

21:43

can't move and they cut a whole bunch

21:45

of nerves and I'm also an extraordinary pain,

21:47

but I didn't want to do any drugs

21:49

just deal with it. But while I was

21:51

dealing with it, I created the company that

21:54

I had that in place when I retired

21:56

anyway. And then it's There's this guy in

21:58

the bureau who I thought he didn't like

22:00

me. I didn't have anything against him, but

22:02

I was pretty certain that he didn't like

22:04

me and okay, whatever. But then he comes

22:06

up to me one day and he's, Hey,

22:08

I just did this presentation for New England

22:11

College and. If you're moving to New Hampshire,

22:13

you should go talk to these guys and

22:15

he sets me up with them. Okay, I

22:17

guess you like me better than I thought

22:19

anyway. Thanks. Ended up, you mentioned Frank at

22:21

the beginning, ended up talking to Frank Jones

22:23

and yeah, come over here and teach some

22:25

classes. Wow. I've been

22:27

doing that on and off. Actually, this

22:29

semester is the first semester I've taught there

22:32

in a year and a half, I

22:34

think, because I've just been way too busy,

22:36

but teaching forensic psychology this semester was

22:38

absolutely love teaching. Today was serial killer day,

22:40

so they got to hear all about

22:42

serial killers. all the all the nice details.

22:44

That's getting into brain of the psychos that are

22:47

out there. Yeah. I was

22:49

reading an article, um,

22:52

I think the Keen Sentinel, do you know?

22:55

And they refer to you as a

22:57

living lie detector. Yeah,

23:00

that's how they referred me. I swear

23:02

to God, I did not say that anywhere

23:04

in the discussion I had with them,

23:06

but apparently that made the good headline. Yeah,

23:08

I got my attention. So do you

23:10

feel like that you can on a short

23:12

on a short term basis without sitting

23:14

down in a controlled environment and talking to

23:16

somebody one on one for an extended

23:18

period of time? Can you tell if somebody's

23:20

lying? If they are

23:22

talking, I can because the

23:24

way that we do it

23:26

is through how they describe

23:29

an event. And they're,

23:31

and it's actually, it's really weird

23:33

because we spend all the time looking

23:35

for indicators of deception turns out

23:37

on the whole universal of. indicators of

23:39

deception really don't exist, but universal

23:41

indicators of truthfulness do exist. Really?

23:44

So I can tell really quickly

23:46

if a story is true, but if

23:48

those indicators are missing, then I've

23:50

got to kind of push them a

23:52

little further to figure out, okay,

23:54

if those don't show up after talking

23:56

to them about it further, then

23:58

they probably are lying. But with just

24:00

body language and that kind of

24:02

stuff, I'd say I'm

24:04

probably averages about 50 % and I'm probably

24:06

if I'm, if that's all I'm looking at,

24:08

I'm probably right about there. Yeah. Yeah.

24:10

All right. So you've seen me do my

24:13

presentation for the students that come down

24:15

from doing the college there in Woodbridge. Is

24:17

I lying or was I telling the

24:19

truth? There you

24:21

were telling the truth. Thank

24:23

you, sir. I'll send you a check. Now

24:27

your company is called

24:29

Texas Academy. Texas Academy. How'd

24:32

you pick that name, PIXIS? PIXIS

24:34

is a constellation. It's a Southern

24:37

Hemisphere constellation, but it's a navigational

24:39

constellation. It's used by ship navigators

24:41

to navigate their way around the

24:43

world before we had GPS and

24:45

everything. And I just

24:47

like that metaphor because when I'm

24:49

training you, my

24:51

goal is never to tell you how

24:53

you should do something or what it

24:56

should look like for you. It's to

24:58

say, here's the science here's the best

25:00

practices here's all this now kind of

25:02

like a compass now you figure out

25:04

where you want to go so i'm

25:06

just helping you go in the direction

25:08

you're figuring out the endpoint you want

25:10

to be so compass helps you get

25:12

there but it doesn't tell you what

25:14

that endpoint should look like for you because

25:17

my specialty right was interrogation kind

25:19

of stuff and that's going to look

25:21

different for everybody because you bring

25:23

your personality into it. You bring yourself

25:26

into it. My applying the science

25:28

is going to look different than you

25:30

applying the science and it should

25:32

because that you bringing yourself into it

25:34

is so important. So that's why

25:36

I kind of like the the compass

25:38

metaphor with it. Makes perfect sense.

25:41

With your company now, I've read through

25:43

your website. see what you're doing,

25:45

global intelligence, consultant, speaker, trainer. It

25:47

looks like you do a lot of corporate things. What

25:50

would, so what would corporate hired

25:52

you to do? With

25:54

the corporate side of it, it's

25:56

kind of two fold. One is

25:58

just the, so say you

26:00

have a, you're a big company with

26:03

stores all around the country and you have

26:05

a large loss prevention department and it's

26:07

actually really training their loss prevention people on

26:09

how to conduct it. interviews,

26:11

but also how to conduct

26:13

investigations and strong investigations. And

26:16

most of, so there's organized

26:18

retail theft, which has become a

26:20

huge problem. And

26:22

as how do you move beyond just

26:24

catching the kid who has been hired to

26:26

go in and steal stuff out of

26:28

your store? How do you build that case

26:30

to go to a higher and higher

26:32

level to deal with the organized aspect of

26:34

it? So that's part of that's the

26:36

interview part and part of it is the

26:39

investigative, but then the. interviewing stuff is

26:41

as I developed that and put all the

26:43

research together, I realized it's just how

26:45

do you talk to other people? And

26:48

I've been moving more into

26:50

that and your manager of the

26:52

large corporation, how do

26:54

you talk to your managers? How do

26:56

they talk to people below them and

26:58

how do you effectively communicate to kind

27:00

of unclog the information that should be

27:02

coming up to you? If you're a

27:04

CEO, you get about 20 % at best

27:06

of available information in your company. And

27:09

you have no way to know

27:11

that that is the information that you

27:13

need to be able to make

27:15

the decisions you have to make. So

27:17

how do you change that dynamic

27:19

in that culture to allow people to

27:21

feel safe in moving that information

27:23

up and not hoarding it for themselves?

27:25

That's kind of the second part.

27:27

And then I've become over the last

27:29

two years really involved in intelligence

27:31

analysis as well. And how do we

27:34

make sense of situation

27:36

so what I was primarily working on

27:38

was the Israel Hamas stuff and

27:40

Alright, so We have there's a lot

27:42

of uncertainty within that situation and

27:44

if we do one thing to try

27:46

to fix it What is that

27:49

going to break or how's that going

27:51

to make something worse or better

27:53

all that so I was asked somewhat

27:55

to my surprise but can't say

27:57

who or for whom but To come

27:59

in and lead that effort in

28:02

terms of helping some of the people

28:04

who are in the middle be

28:06

able to do that job a lot

28:08

better. I spent about a year

28:10

and a half working with them, a

28:12

lot of overseas stuff, working with

28:14

them on that and see if we

28:17

could get to a better outcome

28:19

than where things stood. That was fascinating

28:21

and just somewhat fun. Wow.

28:23

And that's, I mean, that's very modern day

28:25

too. That's going on right now. Yeah. You

28:28

have built up a reputation for yourself through success

28:30

and through being willing to try new things and

28:32

go on these crazy adventures. I'm not sure how

28:34

we go on, but I think you would. I

28:36

would disagree with that, probably, but maybe, maybe. I

28:38

mean, you always want to do something new. That's

28:40

the thing. There's always an opportunity to learn more.

28:42

And I love that part of it. I think

28:45

it's one of the reasons I like having guests

28:47

here on the show is because I don't know

28:49

all the stuff that you guys do. And you

28:51

and I have known each other number for several

28:53

years and. I never knew all this stuff about

28:55

you. I know that you used to speak to

28:57

the students, but I don't think I was ever

28:59

in town the nights that you were talking. Yeah,

29:02

I actually missed doing that. That was

29:04

fun because it was my adventures in

29:06

terrorism talk that I'd do, which is

29:08

just say, hey guys, you could do

29:11

this as well. Stand the right path

29:13

and do your stuff well and find

29:15

yourself in the middle of Pakistan wondering,

29:17

wow. How'd they get here? Get here,

29:19

cool. One thing I just thought of,

29:21

I forgot to ask you, did you do any work

29:23

down in Guantanamo Bay? Um, I

29:25

didn't actually as funny. I was scheduled to

29:27

go down there when I was still

29:29

up in Anchorage, actually I was supposed to

29:32

do a rotation through there. Um, but

29:34

I was doing undercover work at the same

29:36

time and so not undercover thing took

29:38

priorities went and did that rather than go

29:40

to Guantanamo, which you worked undercover too.

29:42

Yep. Yeah. What kind of case was

29:44

that? Can you say? I did a

29:46

couple different kinds of things. One was it

29:48

was back at the time where there was

29:50

a lot of extreme left terrorism in the

29:52

United States. We kind of go back and

29:54

forth as a country was extreme right then

29:56

extreme left and extreme right again and so

29:58

forth. But then it was more of the

30:00

environmental liberation front and animal liberation front and

30:02

they were blowing up labs and stuff and

30:04

burning down Humvee dealerships and whole bunch of

30:06

other things. I got to go live with

30:09

a bunch of them out in the woods

30:11

for a while. We were actually looking for

30:13

a primary thing. We're looking for a guy,

30:15

Daniel Andreas San Diego, who actually just got

30:17

arrested sometime within the last few months. But

30:19

now he was our primary target. So it

30:21

took 20 years to get there. We finally

30:23

got there, but identified a bunch

30:25

of other people along the way. So I

30:27

did that. And then I was doing undercover

30:29

with Albanian organized crime, who they were doing

30:31

drug and human trafficking and stuff. Pleasant

30:34

people. Yeah, that I hated

30:36

that they are so unpleasant and just

30:38

and they shoot each other all the time

30:40

too. So I'm really don't want to

30:42

be you shoot each other. You're going to

30:44

shoot me. Yeah. The intelligence

30:47

factor wasn't very high either. So you

30:49

literally had to pretend you were I

30:51

had to make a character that was

30:53

more intelligent just because I couldn't be

30:55

that dumb all the time. Couldn't get

30:57

down to their level. They

30:59

were a challenge. Did you by

31:01

any chance ever know Dana ride an

31:03

hour? I did. She was working,

31:06

you see, on those animal people out

31:08

in California also. Yeah, I

31:10

try to remember now there's another undercover

31:12

who came up and did a really cool

31:14

role for me on the human trafficking.

31:16

Actually, it was a police officer in the

31:18

Anchorage Police Department who was picking up

31:20

prostitutes and raping them. Oh, geez. Yeah, finally

31:22

got him convicted, but it took a

31:25

while, but... I was thinking it was Dana,

31:27

but it wasn't. But I do. I

31:29

did know her. I might have actually gone

31:31

through undercover school with her because I

31:33

definitely knew her. Yeah. I love talking to

31:35

her. She's a, she's a little spitfire. She

31:38

was episode 156 here. We had her

31:40

on in August last year, 24. Yeah.

31:43

And I think her husband was doing

31:45

some UC stuff as well. And they

31:47

ended up doing a partnership where they

31:49

went over to Amsterdam. I think it

31:51

was cool. And it was all to

31:53

do with the animal, the people that

31:55

were I guess the

31:58

extremists when it comes to animals and

32:00

trying to protect them and blowing up things

32:02

and all that as well So yeah,

32:04

I bet I went through that we did

32:06

an advanced course on that stuff and

32:08

I bet I went through that course with

32:10

her and that's fine hour Yeah, there

32:12

was you were recognized for a lot of

32:14

your work and you got certain awards

32:16

throughout your career I mean, I think the

32:19

biggest one I saw you got the

32:21

FBI Director's Award. Yep That's which which case

32:23

was that? That was actually for the

32:25

work that I did at the HIG. Okay.

32:28

And then the National Intelligence Community

32:31

Citation. Yeah, that

32:33

was for interviewing an ISIS

32:35

computer hacker guy. He

32:37

was fascinating. He was, he's doing this

32:39

stuff for ISIS and he was kind

32:41

of like, yeah, I support ISIS. At

32:43

the same time, he would also tell

32:45

me about how much he loved doing

32:48

crack. So I

32:50

did. You do understand that. There's

32:52

a contradiction here. You like ISIS

32:54

and you love the crack and

32:56

but they would kill you for

32:58

that and his response was yeah,

33:00

that's funny, isn't it? Of

33:03

all your adventures a

33:06

couple I don't to waste

33:08

your time, but I

33:10

mean it's so interesting talking

33:12

to you What what

33:14

case would you say gave

33:17

you the most personal

33:19

satisfaction throughout your career? I

33:24

mean you wore some high profile things.

33:28

And there was the Milan stuff was fun and

33:30

I got to do some really cool stuff

33:32

and I think we made a huge difference on

33:34

my contributions leading up to it and after

33:36

and everything. So that was fulfilling. The

33:38

Nigeria stuff was fantastic. I did

33:40

collect a lot of unique intelligence on

33:42

that and it was a fun

33:44

adventure. probably

33:49

was the one that I mentioned the

33:51

girl who got eaten up by the most

33:53

used dead but whose body got eaten

33:55

by the bear and There were two homicide

33:58

cases that I worked right about the

34:00

same time one was her and We had

34:02

a really good idea that the two

34:04

brothers Michael and Robert Lawson had killed Bethany,

34:06

but Anchors police didn't have enough stuff

34:08

to build that case against them They'd asked

34:10

me to come in and help on

34:12

it. These guys they're running a business and

34:14

if they're killing somebody

34:17

and probably sexually assaulting other people, they're

34:19

probably doing other stuff bad as well.

34:21

I started looking into their business and

34:23

was able to build about a million

34:25

dollar fraud case against them. It was

34:28

a legit fraud case. Wow.

34:30

And that's how I came to talk

34:32

to the brother Robert who had just

34:34

helped dispose the body, was arrested him,

34:36

and it was really interesting. Sat him down

34:39

and I didn't mention Bethany. I

34:41

just laid out laid out the fraud

34:43

case. Here's why you're under arrest. Here's what

34:45

we've got. Read him his rights and

34:47

said, just tell me about your

34:49

life. And he starts talking to me and

34:51

he's talking to me and I'm listening. And

34:53

between 30 and 45 minutes, he stops

34:55

and says, I'll tell you where she

34:57

is. And I was, okay, that is

34:59

exactly what we're here. So

35:02

let's do that. And he

35:04

wanted to talk to an attorney first and

35:06

we had an attorney sitting out in the

35:08

lobby ready to talk to him if that

35:10

came up. and comes in, talks to

35:12

the attorney, we come back in, and

35:14

at this point the detective from APD who

35:16

is leading that investigation comes in with me. I

35:18

was actually doing that interview with a secret

35:20

service agent, a really good friend of mine, we

35:22

started off and then the secret service guy

35:24

stepped out and the APD guy stepped in, but

35:26

then he told us exactly where they'd put

35:28

her. And that was funny because we went out,

35:30

we go to try to find her body,

35:32

but it's the middle of Leonard in Alaska, and

35:34

the snowpack was, I mean, it was probably

35:36

six feet deep. I stepped off, stepped

35:38

off the snow machine and So it was

35:40

over my head in snow. I had to

35:43

grab the snow machine and pull myself out.

35:45

We didn't find her body that go around

35:47

because it was just, there was way too

35:49

much snow, but we found her in the

35:51

spring when everything started melting. Wow.

35:54

Yeah. That one felt good. Yeah.

35:56

That's got to be a satisfaction there. Yeah.

35:58

And there's another one. There's a woman

36:00

named Mindy Schloss who she disappeared and

36:02

Anchorage police were kind of not. Moving

36:05

forward on the case really and her

36:07

family and everybody's she didn't run off

36:09

to Vegas with some guy. That's not

36:11

her She's a nurse. She's 52 years

36:13

old. She's never missed a shift. There's

36:15

something wrong here and so a detective

36:17

at APD came over and said hey

36:19

We're not doing this right and we

36:22

need your help. So got involved in

36:24

that at the time I was a

36:26

squad supervisor So assigned another agent to

36:28

lead that for us or two other

36:30

agents actually lead that for us, but

36:33

Ultimately, we were able to find her

36:35

body, use some really unique methods

36:37

that had never been used before, actually,

36:39

to track her ATM card had

36:41

been used, and track from that ATM

36:43

card to the house where the

36:45

person went to, and it had been

36:47

used at two ATMs. Both tracks

36:49

led to the same house, and

36:52

identify a suspect, actually

36:54

ultimately convict him. What

36:56

made that case special was that when

36:58

I started when I first started at

37:00

the FBI, I was just helping out

37:03

on surveillance on some case because I

37:05

was brand new. But it was targeting

37:07

the same guy and he had murdered

37:09

another woman. And but

37:11

the it was prosecuted locally and they

37:13

host up a bunch of the

37:15

evidence. He only got convicted of tampering

37:17

with the corpse. So

37:20

he's, it's out of jail really

37:22

soon. That made that one really

37:24

important that not only we're able

37:26

to solve Indy's murder, but also

37:28

then get him to confess to

37:30

avoid the death penalty. He confessed

37:32

to the first murder as well.

37:34

Very good. Wow. Those are

37:36

things to be proud of. I mean,

37:38

it's, you don't bring the victim

37:40

back, but it alleviates the questions that

37:42

the families have. Yeah. I don't

37:44

know if it brings, everybody says it brings closure.

37:46

I don't know if that's a real thing or not,

37:48

but. I don't think you

37:50

ever really get closure on something like

37:53

that, but I wouldn't think so. At

37:55

least you get something. Your answers, your

37:57

questions are answered. And you already

37:59

mentioned this to a certain degree, but

38:01

any words of advice or words of wisdom

38:03

to leave us with here? And I

38:05

typically say those who are interested in law

38:07

enforcement or being a first responder of

38:09

going to military. What I would

38:11

say is like, like I said, right,

38:13

I ended up there accidentally. I had

38:15

no idea what I was getting into

38:17

and whether I was even going to

38:19

like it. And it turned out. That

38:21

i could not possibly want a different

38:23

career than what i had right because

38:25

it was so amazing and so awesome

38:27

and that was because of all the

38:29

people i got to work with around

38:31

the world just school people from the

38:34

seal team to the anchors police and

38:36

everybody in between just fantastic to work

38:38

with and and the work you do

38:40

is important so i mean. There's been

38:42

ups and downs and how people feel

38:44

about law enforcement but. You're doing just

38:46

great stuff, and it's just fun as

38:48

well. It has meaning and everything. How

38:50

you get there is probably not follow

38:52

my path. Don't join the rodeo. Yeah,

38:54

exactly. But I think it was just

38:56

be good at a lot of things.

38:58

Be actually good at a lot of

39:00

things. And that is what makes, I

39:02

think, people who are really good at

39:04

law enforcement bring these weird different skills

39:06

to it. And when I was

39:08

at SAIC, worked my butt off because I

39:10

wanted to be the best analyst they had. That

39:12

led me to being in the FBI. And

39:14

so it's just figuring out how to be the

39:16

best at whatever you're doing, I think. If

39:19

you had it all to do over again, would

39:21

you do anything differently? I'm sure there are things I

39:23

do. I mean, it's hard because I don't want

39:25

to change what I did. Like

39:29

the other day we were talking about

39:31

BAU and I did work a lot

39:33

with them. Can you tell our listeners

39:35

what that is? The FBI's Behavioral Analysis

39:38

Unit. I brought them

39:40

in on a lot of interviews that we

39:42

did and I worked closely with them and

39:44

actually worked closely with them on the thing

39:46

in GNOME where all the people were missing.

39:48

I worked with them. If

39:50

I'd had time, which I didn't, but I

39:52

would have liked to do more stuff with

39:54

BAU and be more involved in their research

39:56

and what they were doing and their, their

39:58

case analysis and their profiling stuff and everything.

40:00

Cause that is all fascinating to me. But

40:02

so yeah, that'd be awesome. But at the

40:04

same time, I was so busy doing all

40:06

the other stuff. When was I going to

40:08

do more of that? And what would I

40:10

have lost in the interim? Right. Right. I

40:12

mean, the only, probably the only law enforcement

40:14

person that went into the bin Laden compound. Not

40:17

just any law enforcement agency.

40:20

That is true. Yes. Wow. Um,

40:22

this last trip we had, uh, New

40:24

England college was there in Northern Virginia just

40:26

a few weeks ago. And

40:28

we'll, you know how we go out to

40:30

the academy and back, Frank, let's students come

40:32

and sit next to me on the bus and

40:34

they can ask me whatever they want to

40:36

ask me. And there was two or three

40:38

students I spoke to that are very interested

40:40

in going into the behavior analysis unit that

40:42

they want to pursue that kind of career. Man,

40:46

when I was young, I never heard of that stuff. And

40:49

I would say to them, get

40:51

a degree in psychology and you're still going to

40:53

have to prove yourself in the bureau before they

40:55

let you in BAU. You've got, I've got a

40:57

bunch of friends there and they are. One

40:59

of them in particular is the absolute

41:01

best agent I've ever known. She's five foot

41:03

five, probably agent and who's been in

41:05

firefights around the world. She was in Yemen

41:07

one day, but she's being overrun on

41:10

the roof, shooting back at them. But she's

41:12

also has a PhD and she's absolutely

41:14

amazing. That's the kind of people they're

41:16

looking for. Yeah, be ready

41:18

for adventures. And the cool

41:20

thing about it is you get to travel the

41:22

world, you get to do things that people either

41:24

see in movies or dream that they would like

41:26

to do, but they just don't. You

41:28

and I know why there's reasons are,

41:31

but I mean, and somebody else pays for

41:33

all those adventures. Exactly. It's

41:35

just, it's, this truly is an adventure of a

41:37

lifetime. So any last words you want to leave

41:39

us with before we close out? I can't imagine

41:41

what we haven't covered. This

41:43

I tell you what man, I'm so glad

41:45

we did this because I learned so much

41:47

about you And it's a shame that I

41:49

never got to sit in on one of

41:51

your presentations or that you and I just

41:53

never had the opportunity to sit down and

41:55

talk at length What an exciting life you've

41:58

lived. That's I mean everything the rodeo thing

42:00

just shocks the hell out of me I

42:02

don't think I would have ever expected that

42:04

from you, but for those of you that

42:06

we want to find out more about Colton

42:08

here you can find him on LinkedIn at

42:10

Colton, C -O -L -T -O -N -C -O -S -E -A -L, or

42:13

you can put in, I'm sorry, and I

42:15

got it on there, I don't know. Or

42:18

you can look up Pixis Academy

42:20

at Pixis is P Y -X -I

42:22

-S And then his website

42:24

for his business is Pixis Academy

42:26

.com. Man, thank you for being

42:28

so open and honest us and telling us about the

42:30

things that you've done in your life. It's been a

42:32

real pleasure to have you on here, Colton. It was

42:34

a lot of fun. I I appreciate it. Thanks. All

42:37

right. And for our regular listeners, come back

42:39

next week for another special guest. You never know

42:41

who you're going see on here. I'm going

42:43

continue to bring studs and studettes and former criminals

42:45

on here for as long as we keep

42:47

this show going And right now I have no

42:49

plans to get rid of the show. So,

42:51

but I know that you know that you want

42:53

to come back every week And that's because

42:55

this is the biggest, baddest,

42:57

most dangerous game of all,

42:59

and that's the game of Crimes.

43:02

God bless everybody. See you next week.

43:04

Colton. Thank you so much, brother.

43:06

Alright, thanks mate.