Its really the not going to sleep call. It wasnt too bad out there, thank god. Thank you for coming. Thank you to heritage and a special thank you to my friend calling for providing some advice over the last couple years and a number of different aspects of my life. Think you are having me and constantly being available even though i probably annoy you. Thank you very much. I appreciate. I want to talk to about 50 or 20 minutes i want to start with my job with and white tv in the Police Department and how it changed my internal compass. I was a strange occurrence i had with a young man. Then i would like to delve into a bit of some of the secret Service Years in some of the people and met with and how i just found it to be an incredible experience and i want to leave it with my sense i guess we could call in frustration, the reason i left and this kind of battle of friction i had between my experiences with really good people and what i saw as an institutional problem with the governments failure to do the easy things well and at the reason i walked away. Starting with my Police Experience i never actually wanted to be a Police Officer. I wanted to go to medical school and be a dr. I took the mcats not too long ago actually, i was watching grays anatomy with my wife and i thought i would take the mcats and she said no and just thinks theyre going to take these and i said no im going to. Unfortunately, i didnt get in. That is a whole other story. I never wanted to be a Police Officer, but i talk about in the opening of the book my childhood i dont mean us to be a sob story by any stretch. The scars make us who we are. I worship every lump in those scars. It may be lamb today. It enabled me to see there is real evil in the world and yet i think sometimes thats the perspective on the liberal left and it gets lost if you dont understand that its very difficult. We had a household that had been ravaged by a bad divorce, some income problems and a Family Member who thought that child abuse physical abuse was an appropriate outlet for his internal rage and when you are a young kid witnessing that it tough. You feel as bad as helpless as you have ever felt in your life when you are a nine year old and 10year old and you are watching this happen and you know theres nothing you can do it disturbing and i found peace and just serenity only in the Police Officers when they would show up. It seemed to be the only thing this individual in our lives that would cause all this pain was afraid of. Nothing else. There was no man or woman that scared him except for the blue uniform. I remember thinking that one night that i documented in the book that it really had gotten chaotic and out of control. I remember seeing a Police Officer show up and say, wow, like what a job. You are meeting people and worlds are colliding at their absolute lowest. That was for me was the lowest it had gotten. The pain and fear was an incredible and you have the ability to turn it around like that. I thought, i have to at least try it. So that is what led me to the new york city Police Department. Of course, it started an idealist. I think we all do in Law Enforcement. I tell this story in the book about being on the street when i and im doing a 6 00 p. M. Six a. M. Shift and is quite busy. We had tshirts made up theres a Radio Station in new york 1010 wins, its kind of a news station. To give us it was East New York brooklyn and very busy. There was a drug war going on between the a lot of different rival projects in the neighborhood. It was kind of like a turf war. There was Something Like 300 homicides the year before i had gotten there. To put that in perspective 300 homicides, the entire city of ultima last year had 200. This was one of 78 precincts so it was extremely tough area and it really was a real waking for a young 20year old especially a young 20year old idealist who thought he could change the world. It was tough. I was standing on the corner one night and i saw this young kid who i had seen quite a bit. I dont know how old he was. He may have been 10 or 11. Needless to say he should not have been out on the streets. It was probably midnight or 1 00 a. M. For some reason i struck a conversation up with him that night and i remain the same to him, what do you want to do when you grow up . And he looked at me in quizzically as if the question had really baffled him. Like he had never thought about what to do what that really meant. He clearly didnt have an answer so i said what do you want to do comedy would be a dr. And engineer . Whats your job . How do you want to make money . And he said to me i want to be like a the and i thought did he say jayz now at the time jayz was an upandcoming rapper in new york. I thought okay, he wants to be jayz and he said to me now, not jayz i want to be a the and i thought for a second and i thought he was one of these local drug dealer kids who was a real punk, but once a while he put on a performance in the little atrium in the open area in the middle of the housing projects. It occurred to me it was really almost a transformative moment that his america was not ours. Theres no question about it. He didnt only not want to be jayz, he wanted to be a the. That to me was staggering. I could not get this kid out of my mind. It was a long commute, actually lived in the bordering neighborhood right over the hell as they said. I couldnt get him out of my head. I was thinking how is it that this part of new york centrally located, it was probably no more than 20 minutes from manhattan, right at the bell park, right off the Jackie Robinson parkway. It could not be more geographically suited to economic growth, what is wrong . I mean, the big question, not why are there potholes in the street, why is there an elevated ramp larceny number in this precinct . What is wrong with this particular area . It seemed to me that no one could answer the big question. What, did a nuclear bomb go off your . It didnt make any sense. This kid was no different, it didnt seem when you got him in a conversation than i was when i was nine or 10, yet his america wasnt mine. The idea of being a dr. Or writing a book, and engineer had never even occurred to him and i thought that theres something going on here that i have to have some role in changing and a really sparked an interest, not particularly in politics as we would think a poem political races, but it sparked an interest in me an ideology, liberal versus conservative, libertarian versus grain, economic all ideology. That there has to be an answer here and whatever answer there is clearly was implemented here. I would dig and i would dig and i started and that is eventually how i found the secret service. I was reading a book called, mine hunter and i was going to go into the fbi after that. Mine hunter was about their profiling program and i was in graduate school at the time studying neuropsychology and i found it fascinating, but i was explained to this woman i was running next to on a treadmill who happened to be a Police Officer when they who had worked with the secret service and i was really fascinated by the politics of it and ideology and she said, i think you need to check out the secret service. Looking back, to be fair, and so critical which it is important it was probably the wrong call. I should not have enmeshed myself in a political process that i knew was watering a seed that was only going to grow and eventually sprout a tree that was why to rupture the concrete. I just didnt expect it to really become of me as it did. I thought politics, economical a geology would be a secondary interest and it wasnt. But i found the secret service and i loved the job. I say to people all the time, its the closest thing to being famous without anyone knowing who you are. There is none of the downside, but you get to live this life and be part of government at the absolute highest level. It was incredible experience. I worked with ian quite a bit in the present shall center. That was fun. When jon corzine was trying to get reelected and he lost to this guy come you may have heard it chris christie. I knew he was going to lose because we tried to fill the stadium and i think they thought they would get 20000 people and what did they get, about eight . I thought this guys going to lose bad and i was right. But i found incredible and the secret service because, again, kept thinking what is wrong here . What happened in that 75 precinct . I kept thinking is a government, is a government . And always was fascinated in the secret service having worked with people literally from the white house on down to an Administrative Assistant in hhs somewhere. You are always traveling around different agencies of this scene people. Everyone was so terrific to work with. So i thought it can be a matter of personal and competence. The men and women of the service and the staff i worked with, they would work a in the morning to midnight every night for no overtime at all and no one ever complained about it. It just was the job. The mission was clear. I went to afghanistan with president obama and i remember looking in the face of this Delta Force Operator who was going to go meet the president and i lost my one knock on this delta worker has this house and mile stare. You could tell that if you could tap in and download he is brain he had some stories, per from you probably want to you but they would be fascinating. This staffer who was slightly out of touch came over and i remember him saying, there were armed soldiers everywhere and he said could you ask that guy to lead his weapons outside and i thought, you ask him. Like there was no way im doing that. He didnt ask him. He wound up going in. I remember meeting the delta force guide talking to him and these men and women, the Government Military are such fascinating folks. Whats going wrong . So time went on and i just got more and more disconnected from what i felt in my case, was a parasitic lifestyle and i dont mean that in any qualitative way as a reflection on government work. Strictly personal. I looked around at my neighbors and we were in i believe we still are but we were in a really bad recession at the time and i was suffering no ill consequences at all. Not a bit. Gas prices went up i had a government gas card. I had a government car. My salary went up every year. There was no inflation adjustments and i felt like i had no skin in the game. I thought, in a country like we have it, isnt it odd that when you go and see our immigrant population i was out of this jam woman i met on a subway who came here from pakistan with nothing and is now making six figures just randomly decided to open up a Subway Restaurant and we are not risk takers anymore. We have almost fallen into a middleclass apathy and we have let the country just kind of slowly dissipate around us and not only do we not people ask me how the time in politics, what can we do and i say you are asking the wrong question. I say the right question is not what can we do its what are you doing now. There are people who asked me that question and i say who is your congressman and they have no idea. Think about that apathy that is spread in the country. In a Midterm Election its not uncommon for up to 50 of the people not to even vote. I thought i cant do that. Im sorry. I would rather die poor. My wife and i had a prolonged conversation because i do i had one daughter at the time i have two now. But there were very real consequences to me leaving, so after about five or six months of having this conversation i remember my wife we were going out to a single demaio party in my culdesac. She turned to me and said im not going to talk you out of this, mi . And i said no. She said, okay do it. Go in and resign. So i drove in that monday and resigned and on the way and she told me do you know i was sick last night and she said its because im pregnant. It had been eight years, so i thought the heavens do have a way of putting a price on things, dont they . So i walked upstairs and told my boss my wife was pregnant and i was resigning. He thought i was nuts and was ready to call the secret Service Psychologist and i walked out and they have a glass door in the secret service to take ballistic rounds a really heavy door and when it slammed it really rocket the whole building. When i walked out in that door slammed it was the loudest sound i had ever heard. It still kind of echoes because i knew it was the last time that door whatever shut. I walked away and jumped into the longest of longshot United States senate races potentially in american history. Did it starting with two donors, me and my dad who worked out well and i dont want to get into the politics of the race. We eventually lost, but it was incredible experience. It built a lot of character in me and taught me a lot about the system that i thought i had already seen being a secret Service Agent. I thought this was all. [inaudible] folks is the process that is broken. When i say the process i dont only mean what traditionally i think the general public sees. When i say you been sold out , all of you have been sold out you have been sold out, you have the money or a block of voters that you can influence. That you can move a representative in your direction. They have no interest in you. But you have been sold out internally to by internal interests that have taken precedence over taxpayer interest. I will give you an example. You may save yourself, i know i did, and if you dont you should. Why do we have all of these different Law Enforcement agencies alphabet soup, why . Does anyone have a commonsense answer to that . Ive never heard one and i would think about it over and over again. Why do we have a secret service and fbi . A cia, but then a dia . Why . Heres how the system works and here is what the siren needs to be sounded because as the bureaucracy grows what happens is when everyone is responsible for something the tragedy in common nobody is and thats how you get a situation like benghazi where they ultimately admit openly in the yard that accountability review board that we didnt know and it went to the bureaucracy. As if thats some of you stay, not real people. Heres what works. The reason people in specific factions dont want to give up her sensibility or whatever it may be, lets say the bank fraud credit card fraud, its because theres no power in yes in the government. Theres only power in no. When i can sit there as a federal agent and i have jurisdiction over a crime you need investigated in the private sector, you need to come to me. Because i have monopoly power over that, no private police force. So its in my best interest to maintain a relationship because you have the private money and when i leave, believe me im going to ask you for repayment. So if i give up whatever that may be, bank fraud there is money and interest in everything i now lose my angle when i retire. Its not during your time and the government where you make your money, its when you leave. Its of this dreaded carousel that is causing the problem. Its the very same problem when it comes to the lobby site. Its the money interest that can buy off specific aspects of our government that have controlled everything included policy. Very rarely does your representative actually represent you. The process is very simple. You get a pack, the pack donates to me, you can access, you get to make your case and if dont forget going to be for me and i can put of a smokescreen im going to go out and vote for that piece of legislation assuming you continue to support me later on for my campaign. Its all about not only my preservation in the private sector internally what about maintaining access to the private sector later on when i lead congress or whatever it may be. And maintaining access to that money pool. Folks, its an extremely pernicious problem because again as this bureaucracy grows what you are seen is a sandwiching of layers where upper management and political appointees love it because it allows them to absorb the blow of a bad decision by blaming it on a bureaucracy and the American People have just come to accept it. Imagine if we did and the private sector. If apple everyone always uses apple i guess is because everyone uses an iphone. I love apple. If god for bid out ball was to launch a product and the product was to fail catastrophically, you would see a decisionmaking tree where at some point, i assure you, everyone would be held accountable. I dont know if they would get fired, maybe a pay cut, may be moved nothing. Maybe they would come back with a winner next time, but using known that the government and it is just excepted. I wrote in the last three chapters of the book as kind of a foil to the earlier chapters telling about my experience with really good people of government, i wrote about the boston bombing, benghazi and fast and furious as examples of what i just told you. Think about the boston bombing. You can put yourself on google alert, just go to google them for your naming. You will get in a millisecond an email if your name appears on the internet. Its amazing, is that . To get out years ago you wouldve a library of newspapers, but in the federal government we had one of the surname brothers who traveled and was in the database, he so call paying to use Janet Napolitano words he pinged and knowing that there was a camera. Or no one followed up in an appropriate manner. Does that strike you as odd . In a government that spends trillions of dollars, no one thought there was anything wrong with that . Folks, if it was a private sector jobs would be at stake, salaries would be at stake and promotions would be at say, but yet nothing happened. I assure you it is not a reflection of the good people who act as our federal agents, and promise you. I never met one who if they saw situation like that would not run with it they can stop attack. But no one thinks anything of it because its a rock or see the grows again. It gets worse and worse and worse. With the by product . Lazy bureaucratic efforts to stop what they cant stop through commonsense reform. The nsa, lets just do blanket surveillance at this point rather than looking at , hey, why do we have obese federal agencies . To bring up another example at the end of the book and quoting the accountability revi