Buzzcast - Demo
Buzzcast is a roundtable podcast about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we're using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you. To learn more about what makes Buzzsprout the best place to host your podcast, visit Buzzsprout.com You can podcast!
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Buzzcast - Demo
005 - Apple Original Podcasts, Remote Podcast Interviews, and Customer Support Q&A
This week we dive into some Apple Podcast rumors, talk in-depth about our favorite remote podcast interview solutions, and jump into the support mailbag with Priscilla.
Articles we talk about in this episode:
- Our new blog post "How to Record Long-Distance Podcast Interviews"
- "Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals" from Bloomberg
Our Top 3 remote interview solutions:
Customer Support Q&A Leader Board:
- Kevin - 2 pts
- Alban - 1 pt
- Travis - 0 pts :(
Have an idea for something we should talk about? Post it in the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook and tag one of us to let us know!
Have a question? Shoot us an email at support@buzzsprout.com
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SPEAKER_02:Welcome to In the Line of Fire. I'm your host, Gary Dillon. This podcast will share insights into the lives of public safety professionals who play a crucial role in society, often putting their own lives on the line to ensure the safety and well-being of their communities. Throughout the series, I'm sure you'll discover unique stories and motivations from each guest who bring their perspective and experiences to showcase the various reasons why they commit their lives to protecting others. I look forward to hearing these inspiring stories and learning more about the incredible work these individuals do. In this episode, I'd like to introduce you to John Flood. A lifelong public servant, John takes you through his journey of service from growing up in New York City to his first law enforcement job with the Port Authority Police Department of New York. Hear how John provided over two decades of investigative expertise to the FBI and some of the notable cases he worked. John's commitment to serving doesn't stop in retirement, as you'll hear more from John and how he continues to give back to his community and mentor others. I'm so happy you could make it here today for the podcast. We're also here with Brad Rickle, and Brad hosts a podcast called The Brad Rickle Brief, and it focuses on topics and conversations from people here in western Albemarle County, Virginia. So, John, we're going to go ahead and get started. Right out of the gate, I want to ask you, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SPEAKER_01:It's an interesting question because I don't know what year you were born. I was born in 1957, literally three days before Sputnik went up. So, you know, I grew up at the beginning of the space race and all that. So my initial inclination was I wanted to be an astronaut because that was like the big thing. But my math skills weren't that good. And my father is a retired New York City firefighter. He was a captain there. And so, of course, you wanted to be a firefighter, you know. And I kind of held on to that over the years. Did
SPEAKER_02:he want you to be a firefighter or was that something you wanted
SPEAKER_01:more? Yeah, no, he did not. And he loved his job. He was on the job for 38 years. I absolutely loved it. But I can remember him saying to me, he said, you know, you can do better. It's a dirty, dangerous job. I want you to do better, which I never could understand. But at some point, I was still in elementary school. There was a TV show on called The FBI. It was a very popular show at the time. And I said, this is pretty cool, et cetera. And then I remember a teacher in eighth grade, we had a civics class. And she was a big influence on my outlook toward things. And I remember we had a civics class and we discussed the executive branch and all that other kind of stuff in government. And I remember her asking, is there anybody here who would be interested in becoming an FBI agent? I remember saying, yeah, that's something I think I'd like to do. And I just held on to that. through high school, college, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, that became pretty much my focus of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an FBI agent. So that's where that came from.
SPEAKER_02:So where did you go to college?
SPEAKER_01:I went to St. John's University in New York City. I got a bachelor's in criminal justice there. And then after I went on the job with the police, I went back to school at night and got a master's in government and politics at St. John's as well.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So when you lived in New York City, what part did you live in? Various places or just one place?
SPEAKER_01:I grew up and lived in Queens, in the suburbs of Queens, not too far from where Archie Bunker allegedly grew up. In fact, I know exactly the block and the house that they showed in the opening credits. But yeah, no, we grew up in Queens, went to elementary, high school, and eventually college, all in Queens.
SPEAKER_02:Is your dad still around?
SPEAKER_01:My dad is still a little He lives on the Jersey Shore. He's 91. I'm going up to visit him next week for a couple of weeks. And my mother passed away a few years ago. But yeah, no, my dad's still, he's still there. And my sister lives in Wilmington, Delaware.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So let's talk about your career a little bit. Yeah. Or we can go to family first. We can do family. Yeah, sure. Let's move on to family. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:sure.
SPEAKER_02:So tell us a little bit about your family.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, as I mentioned, my mom and dad and my sister, you know, we grew up the typical Irish Catholic family in New York City. You're either going to be a fireman, a cop, or a priest. I became the cop. My father was the fireman, and my sister's a Franciscan nun. So we kind of hit all the bases with that. I got married in 1986. My first wife was Angela. We met on a blind date. And we had two children, two daughters, twin daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. My wife had MS, multiple sclerosis, and she passed away a few years ago in 2018. And that's what brought us down here. All her docs were at UVA. So when it came, and I'm kind of going ahead to come back, but when I retired from the FBI, that's what brought us down here and we settled in Crozet. So Angela passed away in 2018 and I got married a little less than a year ago to Elaine, and Elaine and I went to that elementary school together in Queens. So we reconnected at the beginning of COVID, and we just, like I said, recently got married down here, and she's settling down here in Crozet. She's escaping from Manhattan.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I have to ask how that connection was made. I mean, you went to school in that elementary school together. Yeah. Was it Facebook?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's an interesting question. Tinder? Yeah. No. We went to elementary school together. We didn't know. We both looked. We didn't know each other in high school. And then toward the end of college, somehow, it was either at the church in Queens or wherever, we reconnected and dated for a short time. I went on the Port Authority police. She went to law school. And boop, that was it. Fast forward about 40 years. Like I said, Angela passed away. And I said, hey, I wonder how so-and-so is doing. And And I don't do Facebook or any of that stuff, but I was on LinkedIn. So I did it through there, and she just happened to– because she said she very rarely went on there, and she just happened to check. Her husband had recently passed away too, and we just started emailing and then texting and then phone calls because of COVID. It was a little hard, but that was– in fact, we were talking about this last night, that it was actually fortuitous because it– forced us to talk a lot you know and uh you know we got to really reconnect and re-know each other um because we were on the we were on the phone quite a bit so yeah that's that's how that developed so
SPEAKER_02:love and romance through covid through covid yeah it was tough that's wasn't easy good
SPEAKER_00:can i ask a question
SPEAKER_02:sure
SPEAKER_00:so um going back to your childhood yeah and i might be stereotyping here but you're but you're talking about 60s new york yeah um you You're talking your family has your cops, your firefighters, but there's the other side of the law, too. Aren't there street toughs rolling through the neighborhood at all? Was that a thing that's just in the movies and this isn't a thing?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, it's not so much that it was just in the movies because there were bad guys. I mean, let's face it, there were. It was different. It was a different time in New York, quite a bit different. But, I mean, no, the neighborhood that we lived in, and it still is. I mean, we went back and visited not that long ago still. Still primarily blue collar. A lot of cops and firemen live in the area, still do. In fact, one of the things I noticed in our neighborhood, there was a lot of street signs that had names of primarily firefighters, but some police officers who were killed in 9-11, they renamed streets. Quite a few of them came from the neighborhood where we grew up. So to answer your question, if there was street crime in our neighborhood, him in big news. It just didn't happen. Were there car thefts? Probably some burglaries, but that's primarily it. Go to the other boroughs, other sections of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx. I mean, I was there when the Bronx was burning, you know, when it was really bad, you know, the times were bad there. But no, the area we grew up in was very blue collar.
SPEAKER_00:So it wasn't a Martin Scorsese movie?
SPEAKER_01:No, not at all. Not at all.
SPEAKER_02:No. No. Well, interesting childhood, John. Let's move on to your career. So you said you started with it. Did you do anything prior to going into law enforcement? Did you sign a job? Did you do McDonald's like everybody
SPEAKER_01:did at some point? No. It's like everything else. You get a job because your father or somebody knows somebody. And I worked in a sheet metal shop where a lot of firefighters moonlighted because there was a firehouse around the corner. So I worked there on on weekends, odd jobs, you know, like sweeping floors, loading trucks, you know, running, getting lunches for guys, et cetera. And then when, and this is like through high school and into college, I did that. And, you know, like on summer breaks, I worked my whole summer breaks, you know, when there was Easter and Christmas breaks, I'd work through them, you know, and I saved up. And that's primarily how, you know, I paid for my undergrad degree was doing that. So it was just, primarily doing that. And then as I was coming toward the end of college or high school going into college and then toward the end of college, that's when they had all the financial and fiscal difficulties in New York City. So they were laying off cops and firemen. It was a lot of that, 75, 76 in there. So things were kind of bleak in the civil service world, you know, what I wanted to do. And I knew that I couldn't go right from college right into the FBI that just wasn't going to happen. I was going to have to do something. So I started taking police tests all over the place. And I remember the first ones that I took were in Fairfax County. I took Fairfax County Fire and Police on the same day. I took Prince George's County in Maryland Fire and Police on the same day. Virginia Beach, I went down there. There was one classmate of mine from college, and we're still in touch. We went on the port together. But he left in the middle of college and took one of the jobs down to Virginia Beach and then came back. So yeah, I can remember standing on the campus or the grounds at St. Johnson. What the hell am I going to do? They're laying guys off, et cetera. But then toward the end of college, things were starting to loosen up in the late 70s. And I took the NYPD exam. I took the New York City Fire exam. And then the Port Authority exam. I took that one. And They called me. As I was going through the recruitment process, it was late 79. I graduated in the summer of 79. And I forgot to mention, I did have military service. I missed that one. Very important, very important. Yeah, I was in the Coast Guard. I was in the Coast Guard Reserve. And so that did fill gaps during the summer because it was between my... It was between my sophomore and senior year, I went to boot camp in Cape May, New Jersey, and then got released to go back to college. And, you know, I did my weekend a month with the station. And then the second summer, which was the summer between when I graduated from college and then started with the port, I had to finish up my six months active duty. So I did that down in Yorktown, Virginia for most of it. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:What compelled you to do this? you to join the Coast Guard and yeah and why that over other branches
SPEAKER_01:yeah well my father was a was an alum he was he had been in the Coast Guard during Korea uh and and what I liked about it was there was a special program I wish I had learned about it earlier uh essentially it was geared toward guys toward the end of high school where you as I mentioned you did one summer boot camp second summer your your specialty school I didn't find out about it till I was in college but at that time, there were no conflicts going on, thank God. And I looked at it and I said, well, they've always got a mission. They're always doing something with the search and rescue and pollution and all that other stuff. So that's what compelled me toward the Coast Guard. And I loved it. I really enjoyed my time in the Coast Guard. So
SPEAKER_00:what was your job?
SPEAKER_01:I was a port security. They've changed the rate now. It's a law enforcement specialist, but it was a port security So essentially, I was still on a small boat crew, which was a blast. It was a lot of fun. I mean, everybody on my crew, there was four of us. There were two cops and two firemen. It was just a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00:Sunglasses tanned up.
SPEAKER_01:You got it. It was really, really good. And I learned a lot there. So I got released from my active duty toward the end of the summer of 79. I was going through the process with the the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and with NYPD. And in February of 1980, I was hired by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police. So that was the beginning of my law enforcement career.
SPEAKER_02:What kind of things did you do with the Port Authority? How long were you there? What assignments did you have?
SPEAKER_01:I was there for six and a half years. I started out at JFK Airport. What was nice about that agency was, I mean, the benefits were really good. They They paid for most of my graduate degree, et cetera. But it was a nice agency. Smaller. At that time, it was only about 1,200 men and women on the job. But what was really nice about it, which I know you'll appreciate, Gary, is we were a dual function agency. We did the police officer stuff. We also did the crash crew at the airports. So we were dual trained. So that was I enjoyed that. I really did enjoy that a lot. And if I had not gone on with the FBI, I was perfectly happy there. I would have been fine. But yeah, but I did a year at Kennedy. And then you bounce for a couple of years. You go into a pool where you work all over the place. I ended up at the first World Trade Center. I was there for almost two years, which was good. I enjoyed that assignment quite a bit because it was a small city. It wasn't just two buildings. because it was a vast complex. So it was like working in a small city. There was a firehouse right across the street, which was good because I knew a lot of the guys there. And with the captain of the truck company in there, he had been a fireman with my dad, so I knew him all the time. So we had a really good working relationship with them. So I enjoyed that. And then in my last year before I left, I got detailed to a special assignment where we did vulnerability studies of the different facilities at the Port Authority. So it was a pretty good mix of assignments. And then during that time is when I was starting to test for the FBI. And my last captain with the Port was very supportive of me going to that. He was very vocal and supportive of me making the change.
SPEAKER_02:So that never left you. Even though you had started with the Port Authority and you're working there, your eye was still on the ball being the FBI?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was. Yeah, I And it was tough, too, because the year I was hired in 1986, they only hired like 300 agents. And there was like 10,000 or 15,000 people who tested at that point. And, you know, there's affirmative action issues, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of things going on. So it was difficult to keep your eye on the ball because, you know, the chances of you getting hired were slim and none. So I prevailed and I was able to get on.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, let's roll through your FBI career. What was your first assignment? So you go through the FBI
SPEAKER_01:Academy. I went through Hoover Highs. We called Quantico, which I was there for the summer cruise in 1986. And that place is godforsaken in the summertime. It's just hot and humid there. And there'd be days when the Marines, they had like a color code system when they couldn't do outdoor or activities. They called them black flag days. We were out running. I had already been through the police academy. I had already been through boot camp. One of my classmates who had a similar background, he said, this is just a major inconvenience of my life, was going through the academy again. But it wasn't a pushover. It was a lot of work. The firearms was tough because you basically had to unlearn everything you already knew and had to relearn again, that kind of stuff but it was a chat
SPEAKER_00:yes what's the what's the major difference having gone through boot camp but what what did you have to unlearn that was incongruent with the new philosophies
SPEAKER_01:it was you know it was just that it was just the firearm style you know isosceles versus weaver style and then i know gary understands what i'm saying uh you know you've already made you've already got habits you're already got how you do things etc etc so you had to learn their way and uh and we were going it was a transition period going from the revolvers to the pistols, and it was a transitory time in the firearms world, so it was a lot to learn with that. So after I graduated from the academy, I was sent, my first two years were in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I remember we got our orders, and somebody captured the look on my face was, you know, when I opened my orders, and And I remember calling my fiancée, Angela, who was my fiancée at the time, and I told her where we were going. There was a long pause on the other side.
SPEAKER_02:We're going where? She said, no, that's where you're going.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But, no, for us it was good because we got married on Saturday and left to drive to Arkansas on Monday. So that was our first honeymoon.
SPEAKER_02:Did you have a preference on where you wanted to be? Oh, yeah. Did you want to stay home? Yeah. Or do you always have to go somewhere else first?
SPEAKER_01:Generally speaking, I don't know how it is today, but then you could ask. I mean, you put a list of 10. I put like New York, Newark, Philly, Boston, Little Rock,
SPEAKER_02:Arkansas. Was Little Rock on that list?
SPEAKER_01:No. But, you know, in retrospect, it was good because it was a small office. I mean, for the whole state, there was 40 of us, I think. In the headquarter city, Little Rock, there were 25 agents. So it was good and bad. It was good. It was a good place to learn the work because you literally got a chance to do everything, you know, bank robberies, cross burnings.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was just going to ask, what kind of cases do you take? Especially, you're new to the FBI, so I'm guessing they're not going to give you the biggest cases, right? You got to earn that responsibility?
SPEAKER_01:Yes and no. No, they throw you in the deep end of the pool fairly quickly because that's how you're going to learn. The squad they assigned me to was a white collar slash terrorism squad. I'm like, I don't know. White collar. I don't know. And it was good because the guys I broke in with were all, except for one other guy, was a baby agent like me. They were all senior season. This is their retirement office agent. So they had been there a long time. So, I mean, they had to unlearn all my New Yorkisms, which we'll discuss in a minute. That was funny. But, no, they were a good bunch to break in with. And it was interesting because they'd send me out on bank fraud cases bank teller fraud cases. I could barely balance my checkbook. So it was kind of cool. You'd sit down literally with the bank president in some little bank in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas, and he'd start this, that, and the other. And I'd always stop them. And I'd tell them right up front, look, I don't know anything about banking. You've got to explain this to me. And it kind of gave you, in a way, it gave you cred with them because you're not going in there like you know everything. But yeah, I did a lot of those cases, just bank fraud cases, wire fraud, those things. The other side of it, which I did enjoy, was the terrorism side. Because at that point, we did a lot of domestic terrorism cases. There was one big one that was one of the extremist groups. It was called the Covenant Sword, the Arm of the Lord. It was a big, big case. I mean, I did little ones like Crossburn. and things like that. But this was a major, you know, weapons caches, and it was a really, really, it was a big case at that time. You see the, he was governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, you've seen his name. He was the U.S. attorney there at the time. So at that point, that was a pretty big case. And then we had a lot of, there was cells of, I don't know,
UNKNOWN:Um...
SPEAKER_01:foreign terrorist groups there of all places. There was a lot of colleges and universities. There were military bases there. So
SPEAKER_00:can I ask?
SPEAKER_03:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not in the FBI, so how do you approach cases like this? So you get the big file dropped on your desk and they're saying crack it. How do you even start approaching things like that? Are these things that you can talk about?
SPEAKER_01:Some of them I can. Like with the white collar cases, you say it's like a file. I'd get it at the very beginning when it was nothing. It was the title, how the initial complaint came in, here's the faxes we have and go do it. What I typically would do would be to sit down with one of the other agents in the squad, typically the accountants. All of them, the guys who broke me in were all accountants, which was good because they were very organized and they were able to teach me how to organize my cases, which lasted my entire career. But now you look at what you've been provided with. Typically, you'd sit down with an assistant U.S. attorney and talk with he or she and say, what do you need for me to get to make your case? So a lot of it was predicated on that was, OK, what are the elements? What do you need? What are you looking for? We did. We worked well. And I got to say, Brad, that in my career, whether it was there or And then later in New York, we worked very well with the U.S. attorney on cases. I mean, very, very well. You know, it wasn't adversarial at all. It was, you know, tell me what you need to make the case. And, you know, you do your investigation, give it to them, and they'd look at it and say, okay, we need more of this or less of that. And that's how it worked. So I have nothing bad to say about the U.S. attorneys. They were pretty good. The assistants we worked with, because they were like us, they were young, you know, just new in their careers and learning the ropes, too. So it was good. And they'd go out and party with us and the cops. So it was great. So, yeah, that was Little Rock. Again, because it was a small office and, you know, a lot of the resident agencies, the small ones, like the Charlottesville office here is considered a resident agency out of Richmond. In Little Rock, they were like one or two agencies. in offices. So if they got swamped with cases, particularly what we call, if an agent in another office, some other state, needed like a one-shot lead, they needed you to go out, they needed an agent in Fayetteville, Arkansas to go out and interview somebody, like a one-shot thing, those would get stacked on the side. What they typically would do would be to take the new agents and ship you out to those ones for a couple of weeks at a at a shot and go out and cover those one shot leads and I you know I came to really love that because and my background as being as I always said a real police officer a real cop that paid off because what would happen early on in my career I remember a senior agent had told me this is two things I remember one was a senior agent who told me he said Don't ever forget where you came from. Don't ever forget that you were a police officer. And then one of our instructors in Quantico, he was one of our legal instructors, and I'll never forget it, and I say that to this day is, he said, you know, you could take all these alphabet agencies, FBI, CIA, DEA, Marshall, all that stuff, you could do away with them tomorrow, and you're still going to need the cop on the beat. And I never forgot that. That was always my approach to cases and how I, how I interacted with police officers and all, you know, and it, that's the way it was supposed to be done. It should be done.
SPEAKER_02:Because those relationships aren't always the best between local, federal and local and state.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, it can be. And I've seen it. I've seen the, I've seen, I mean, there's the Hollywood stereotype. It's never that bad. It was never, ever that bad. But there was some, you know, some, some, some guys were cocky. They were fresh out of, the ones who were fresh out of college had never been worked at something before. They tended to be a little more cocky. But those of us who particularly have been in the military or who had been in law enforcement before, we never had a problem because we know how to talk to people. And we had been in the trenches. We knew. So getting back to going to a small town, you know, I'd get a lead, interview Billy Bob Smith in Dogpatch, Arkansas. There is such a town.
SPEAKER_00:And probably such a
SPEAKER_01:person. And you get it. And his brother. And, you know, you had to interview him about whatever it was. And that's it. There was no address, no phone number, just Billy Bob Smith dog patch Arkansas. So, you know, what do you do? You go to the local sheriff's office, which he is the sheriff, the only guy, and you go in and you go in. Yeah, really. It was, you know, and you go in and you sit down and one of the senior agents in the office told me bring some ammo with you bring a couple of boxes of ammo with you because you know we we just got it you know you went and got they gave you the ammo and you take a couple of boxes and you set it down on the desk and he he had nothing and you'd start to talking about New York and tell me about being a police officer and this that and the other and what kind of gun do you carry all that kind of stuff and finally so what can I what can I do to help you I need to find Billy Bob Smith and he literally he'd pick up the phone and call Billy Bob Be told, get your ass in here. The FBI wants to talk to you. And it was a lot of that. And I look back, and it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed working with the state and local police officers. And we had a really good relationship with the Arkansas State Police. We had to be. And we had their radio in our cars because some places like Dogpatch, Arkansas, you were in the middle of nowhere. And the only one you could hope to get if you got into a jam was the state police. No, there was no such thing as cell phone. We didn't have internet. We didn't have cell phones. There was one pager for all the agents in the office. I mean, that's, you know, there was no laptops. That was all new. So that was the, there was one other one I was thinking of with the state and local police officers. But yeah, oh, I remember. We did work, I worked one case up in the Ozarks and they sent a whole bunch if it was up there and it was a voter fraud case and I remember we pulled into the town square and I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie Mississippi Burning it was a scene from that we pulled into the town it was a little small little town in northern Arkansas and you know it was 1986 and you know the Confederate General statue in the town square with the cannon and all of this stuff and the colors and the you know the American flag and the Confederate flag flying, et cetera. And everybody in the town square stopped and looked because we were all getting out of the cars in our little suits and all that. So I remember at the time thinking, this is Mississippi burning. That's what it looked like, the appearance. So I did my first two years there. Our squad secretary, Betty, she started a notebook. And every time when I came out with some little phrase or saying that was typically New York, she wrote them down. And when I left it, when I got to They gave me that. I talked about mopes and all the scales and all the New York phrases.
SPEAKER_00:What years
SPEAKER_01:was that? 86 to 88, I was there. And then I remember... Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:Before you move on, Tom Cruise famously made this movie, American Made, through Little Rock, Arkansas. They were pushing a bunch of cocaine. I don't know if... this is all fictitious or not, but I just wanted to bring it up because I think of pulp culture, things like that, where Little Rock gets, you know, how many movies are made about Little Rock.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, it was, you know, I went back there a couple, several, many years later after I went to Quantico, I went back to teach a school there and I didn't recognize it. It built up, the presidential library was there then, so it had changed a lot. When I went there, it was a sleepy, it was the capital and it was a sleepy city It really was. But, yeah, when it came time, you know, typically after two to four years, you were going to get moved. And I remember the special agent in charge saying, boy, if you want to go to New York, there's not going to be a problem. Because at that point, we were hemorrhaging agents in the big offices because of the pay disparities. So I stuck my hand up, and I did get transferred to New York, and then I went to the Joint Terrorist Task Force in New York, which was a blast because we were working with cops. My partner was an NYPD detective. That was a good tour. It was up in New York. I was there from 88 till 98 on the Joint Terrorist Task Force. I did spend some time detailed away from it to our office at JFK Airport, which was a blast because I went home. I went back to where I started as a cop, which was very good assignment because guys I was on the job with as police officers were not bosses. They were captains, etc., etc. So that was a really enjoyable time. So what
SPEAKER_02:specialties did you take up when you were with the FBI?
SPEAKER_01:While I was in the New York office, I remember they were soliciting for the hostage or crisis negotiation team in the New York office. And I remember I had read the book by Frank Bowles, Hostage Cop, and I had seen Dog Day Afternoon, the movie, and all that other stuff. And I said, you know, that might be kind of interesting to do that as a collateral duty. So I guess it was like 1980, 1989. It was somewhere around, probably 89, I went back down to Quantico for the two-week negotiation course, and that's when I first was introduced to it. And that became a collateral duty in 1989. when I was in New York. And I learned a lot from that. Not so much from jobs that we would go out on as FBI negotiators, because really the only time we would deploy is if our SWAT team went out. We would go with them in case there was a barricade or something. But I got together with the guys from NYPD's negotiation team and then the guys out on Long Island and Nassau and Suffolk hostage negotiation teams on from the PDs out there. And that's how I learned to become a negotiator was going out with the police officers because they did it every day. And I learned so much from the guys from NYPD and from Nassau and Suffolk. And I credit with them with where I went with my career as a negotiator.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Any other specialties besides that? No, that was pretty much it. That was enough. That was enough. Any notable saves or anything through your negotiations? Yeah. As we get closer to the end of your Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I mean, in New York, I had one notable job. It was skyjacking. And to this day, it was the last skyjacking. It was an incident where a guy on an aircraft flying from, he was going from Munich to somewhere else, and I don't recall where it was. But it was in 1993. It was right around the time of the first World Trade Center bombing. So it kind of got eclipsed by that. But anyway, it was eclipsed. guy who had taken control of a plane and wanted to fly it to New York. So that's what they ended up doing. They brought him to JFK. So I was involved in the negotiations with an NYPD detective and a Port Authority police detective sergeant. So we were the negotiation team for that and it was successfully resolved. So yeah, that was around that time. Before I went to Quantico, the other two major cases that were notable that I was involved on was the first World Trade Center bombing. Flight 103 had gotten blown up over Lockerbie because that was inbound to JFK, so I was very involved in that. And then TWA 800, that got blown up out over the Atlantic after leaving JFK. So those are some of the major investigations I was involved in there before I went to Quantico.
SPEAKER_02:I can't imagine the amount of investigation and work that went into something as big as those.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's just, it was mind boggling. And again, you know, we talk about the stereotypes in all those cases. I mean, it was, we were involved, ATF, NYPD, other states were involved, you know, with the Lockerbie one flight 103, that was Scotland Yard, the Scots were involved. So it was a major, major cases. And it was the first time I got really exposed to work, you know, with working with the lab and the resources there. So it was pretty cool. That stuff was good. And when you're in the heart of it, it's just, you know.
SPEAKER_02:It's overwhelming.
SPEAKER_01:It's overwhelming. I mean, I wasn't the case agent in any of them, but I was involved and did a lot of pieces. Like with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, myself and another agent, we were responsible for working with the witnesses, with the U.S. Attorney's Office. That's what all we did. So it's a lot of work, but it was very gratifying. So working with foreign law enforcement
SPEAKER_02:agencies, what was that like?
SPEAKER_01:You know, in doing it in a very small part when I was in New York really helped me when I went to Quantico, because Quantico was a whole other different ballgame with working with the overseas guys. They're no different than we are. You know, they really weren't. They had the same blue-collar guys trying to get a job done. So I enjoyed
SPEAKER_02:it. Cooperation there for the most part? What's that again? Good cooperation there for
SPEAKER_01:the most part? Very much so. We worked very well. I mean, and again, we talk about the Quantico part of it, but I worked with the Brits and Germans and Israelis and literally all over the world. It was good cooperation, it really was. Good.
SPEAKER_02:So recently I learned that you were involved in a pretty big case. If you're willing to talk about it a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. The container ship that was that was hijacked off the coast?
SPEAKER_01:The Captain Phillips case. The unit that I, when I went to Quantico in 1998 and to when I retired was a crisis negotiation unit up at Quantico. It was a newly stood up unit. And I was a supervisor there and then I eventually became the unit chief. And one of our, it was a fun unit because it had three major parts to it. We were operational. We were the the primary negotiators for the FBI and the federal government. Anytime a U.S. citizen is kidnapped overseas, the FBI is responsible for providing the investigative part of it, the negotiation part of it, and some of the infrastructure part of it, the organizational part of it. Other government agencies have other parts of it, but that was our primary mission. So anytime a U.S. citizen got abducted overseas, our unit was responsible for providing the negotiation assets to that. So the other parts to our unit, besides being, we were operational with that, and we provided the negotiation element for the hostage rescue team. We also did all the instructions for FBI negotiators nationwide, as well as state, local, and overseas people. We did a lot of instruction overseas. And we ran our negotiation program for our negotiators in the field. So that's kind of a background for that. The Captain Phillips case that you referred to, I was unit chief by that time. And we all know how the thing unfolded. Pirates seized the Maersk, Alabama. It was a And... I remember it was around Easter time, and I'm spacing what year it was. But I remember we were, like everybody else, we were watching it on the news, et cetera, and the Navy was shadowing them and all this other stuff, and we kept saying, you know, we're not going to get rid of all that. The Navy's got it. And later on that night, it was like midweek before it ended, middle of the night, I got a phone call, which is when I got most of my phone calls because most of the stuff was happening overseas Anyway, I got a call from a captain so-and-so at the Pentagon Command Post or Command Center. And he tells me he's about to patch me through to the bridge of the USS Bainbridge. And I said, oh, stop right there. I said, I'm not going to get in the middle of this. I'm going to assign one of our negotiators to it. And I connected him with one of the negotiators in my unit. But the long and short of it was the captain of the Bainbridge recognized that they wanted to start communication with the pirates. And what ended up happening was the negotiator, the supervisor in my unit, was sitting in his living room in Fredericksburg coaching a Navy chief who was coaching an interpreter talking to the pirates. So that's how that worked. So that's how that started. I knew we were going to be working with assets from the Navy that were depicted in the movie. And I sent a negotiator down to Virginia Beach to be in their command post, to sit with the Navy and basically find out what did they need from us. So without getting too into the who, what, one where the classified stuff you know the Navy the Navy elements told us what they needed in terms of gathering intel and what was going on in the boat and they basically told us you know they were not going to allow that lifeboat that the Captain Phillips was in on board they weren't going to allow that to get anywhere near Somalia because they figured once he got on on the beach in Somalia, you'd never get them again. So that's essentially what we did with the Navy is we facilitated how that played out toward the end of it. So we just had communications. We had had a prior relationship with the Navy, with those elements in the Navy and in the Army. And because we would deploy overseas, we had always said we wanted them to understand what we could do help them in terms of intelligence gathering and in terms of keeping hostages alive for longer periods of time so if they needed to facilitate or to effect a rescue overseas we were able to gather the intelligence for them make the actually elongate the situation make the situation go longer because it gave them more time to gather intelligence from other sources and You know, it gave them an opportunity to develop rescue plans, et cetera, et cetera. So essentially, that's how Captain Phillips unfolded. Afterwards, when they were starting to make the movie, Hollywood came to interview us about it. And it was funny because I don't know if they were writers or producers or whatever they are. We sat down with them. And the feeling that we got was that they wanted to play us off against the Navy, that the Navy just wanted to kill the pirates and we wanted to keep them alive. And we told them, well, that's not really how it happened. And we just, you know, we were there to assist the Navy. The Navy requested our assistance, and that's what we did. We assisted them. So our piece of it never made it to the movie. It was just what happened and, you know, the other parts of it. So that was the Captain Phillips caper.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. And we talked about this previously. You haven't seen the movie.
SPEAKER_01:Nope. I haven't seen it. I just, maybe one day. I lived it. I don't need to see it.
SPEAKER_02:At least to see if there's any inaccuracies in there.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure there are. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I just recently heard that about you, which is one of the reasons I wanted to interview you for this. So let's move on from, so you retired from the FBI.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, in 2012, my wife, Angela, was getting, her illness was really taking hold of her. With the MS, it was getting progressively worse. My daughters were in school, both my twins were in school down at the University of Virginia. As I mentioned earlier, all her neurotic, and all those specialties for her were here. So, you know, I was 55 at the time and I didn't want to be told I had to retire at 57. And I was told by, I don't recall who, but there was a position in emergency management opening up down at UVA. So I applied and interviewed for the job and I got it. So when I retired in July of 2012 from from the FBI start of the next month at UVA doing emergency management. So we sold our house in Northern Virginia and settled down here in Crozet. We found a house in Crozet. So that's-
SPEAKER_02:Where were you? Where'd you live in Northern Virginia?
SPEAKER_01:Stafford. You lived in Stafford. Stafford County, just outside of Quantico.
SPEAKER_02:So John, I met you through emergency services also. I'm not sure how long ago. I joined the fire department here in 2012 after moving here in 2011. And sometime along the way, the way I met you, and I had heard that you were a retired FBI agent, but we never really sat down and talked about it. Talked about it, yeah. And I've just found, you know, my working with you through what you do with the Rescue Squad, we just have a great relationship.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the Rescue Squad, you know, I had always seen it. Yeah, I want to get to have it. How
SPEAKER_02:did you end up in the rescue squad after being in law enforcement for so long? It's like maybe being a cop forever, and how did you end up in the fire department? You're supposed to hate each other, right?
SPEAKER_01:No, not at all. Yeah, you know, I had seen it from afar, you know, both the fire, the Crozet Fire Department and, you know, Western Alamoire Rescue Squad. But, of course, because I was so involved with, you know, taking care of my wife, et cetera, and You know, the job at UVA kept me busy as well. But we were unfortunately customers of the Western Alamo Rescue Squad because of Angela's condition. And so, you know, I got a chance to see it. You know, as I mentioned, you know, the culture I grew up in, you know, I still had an affinity for the fire service. I neglected to mention, I'm an honorary battalion chief with New York City Oh, great. Yeah, with the fire department up there. Just some work I had done with them. And, you know, it always stuck, you know, that culture of service, et cetera, it's in your blood. It's just there. Fast forward to 2018. Angela passed away. She went into respiratory arrest, and Rescue 5 responded. They brought her back. and when I went to the when I went to the emergency room met her there met them there Costas Albertus the chief met me at the door and I had met him through my work in the emergency management it was just like a hi hello thing and I knew he was very involved in western rescue but anyway he met me at the door and told me what they had done and you know he was very you know candid with me wasn't sure if she was going to make it how long Angela and down, et cetera, et cetera. And that actually was good. It gave me some comfort. I had some really good information, and I knew what I needed to do, et cetera. And one of the priests from St. Thomas Aquinas was there, and he had anointed her and all that. So I knew where I was going with that. So shortly after Angela passed away, Costas and Melanie, they reached out to me and said, hey, you know, Basically, don't hang out alone. You're home alone. Why don't you come down to the rescue? Why don't you have a meal with us, et cetera, et cetera? And see if you like it. And the rest is history. So I'm coming up on my fifth anniversary there. So that's how I got involved in it. And I found the culture there of service. And it was kind of a firehouse culture a little bit, the same feel to it. Yes, familiarity there. The familiarity. I got a chance to, you know, to work with the guys at Crozet Fire and this is all right. I like it. So that, that's, that's, it's, it's part of that giving back to the community thing. And, uh, and I, I retired from the university and at the end of 2019, I had had enough and, um, it gave me more of an opportunity to get more involved with the rescue. So here I am today.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's, uh, you know, we, I know the, the folks I work with and the fire department, they're always happy to see you on the scene. We just love when you're there.
SPEAKER_01:I'm very much into, and you've heard this from my career, into the collaborative part of it. We all have to work together. We're there to support each other and I firmly believe that and I love that about it. It's
SPEAKER_02:hard to walk away from service after all those years with your law enforcement and FBI and then With your wife passing, then what do you want to do with your time? And you chose to do this to continue with the service. That's pretty admirable.
SPEAKER_01:It's admirable, but it's fun. I enjoy it a lot.
SPEAKER_02:The relationships you build, too. I mean, and with Western Albemarle Rescue Squad, you have a lot of young UVA students that are constantly coming and going. So you're building all these relationships and friendships.
SPEAKER_01:Relationship, friendships, and I'm very aware of it and conscious of it that– I might have a little bit of an impact on them because they're young. I mean, a lot of them, two of the young ladies on my crew, they're just going into the second year of college. I mean, I could be their father. I mean, I'm old enough to be most of their fathers, you know, on my crew. And I'm hoping I can influence them a little bit just in terms of, you know, maybe not necessarily their career choices or anything like that, but just their outlook on life, this idea of service, the idea of responsibility and all that. That's just something I can impart on them.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's changed a lot over the years, and having somebody older like you in there to be able to give advice is really beneficial when they might not be able to get that advice elsewhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's very true, and I enjoy that. I really do.
SPEAKER_02:So, John, we've covered everything from growing up to your career to your second life now, married and with the Rescue Squad. Anything else you want to talk about before we go? we close things out?
SPEAKER_01:No, I just appreciate the opportunity to sit and chat. And I hope this influences or helps somebody else down the line to do the right thing for the right reason. So that's about it.
SPEAKER_02:Sounds like you've been doing that for a long time. Yes, I try. Thank you so much for joining us today. This concludes this episode of In the Line of Fire with Gary Dillon. Special thanks to John Flood for sharing his life of experience and volunteerism with our listeners. If you're interested in volunteering with the Western Albemarle Rescue Squad, please reach out to them through their website at www.westernrescue.org. In the Line of Fire is sponsored by Versa, Virginia's largest and most financially sound group self-insurance pool, providing auto, property, liability, and workers' compensation compensation coverage to local governments, schools, and authorities.
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