WEBVTT - Ep. 78: Secret Agent Man - R.T. Stewart (Part 1) 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:08.240 M I hunted men for a living. That's how I 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:10.720 looked at it. I went from hunting animals to me 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:13.920 and when I captured that was my trophy on the wall. 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.720 On this episode of the Burglaries podcast, we're going deep 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.800 undercover in the rough country of southeast Ohio to learn 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:27.200 about the secret lives of wildlife poachers and the life 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:31.280 of an undercover wildlife agent by the name of RT. Stewart. 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:36.280 He worked eighteen years for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:38.879 He was one of the lead agents on the largest 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.160 turkey poaching sting in US history. He's a decorated law 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:48.360 enforcement officer known for going deep undercover, even years at 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.720 a time, and willing to do whatever it took to 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:56.160 bust the outlaws. And in his career he never had 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:59.920 a single one of his targets suspects not be convicted 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.880 of crimes. If the bad guys had known him, they'd 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:07.960 have feared him, but they didn't because he was a ghost. 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.360 We'll hear from author Chip Gross, who wrote a book 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:16.520 about RT, and will interview Dr Matthew Sharp's of California 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:21.080 State University about the psychology of undercover agents and the 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:25.759 personal cost that comes with living a lie. In the 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:29.320 first episode of this series, yes, I said, series, will 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.560 meet RT and he'll show us the life of an 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.360 undercover agent. And on part two we'll talk about his 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:41.880 biggest job. You're gonna laugh, be intrigued, and you're gonna cry. 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.080 I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.080 Your whole life is lie. Who you talk about stress, 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.200 but when you're young and dumb, you don't even think 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:56.680 about it. But it's stress. Was it worth it? You're 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:09.959 too good? Ye. My name is Clay Nukelem and this 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:14.079 is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:18.520 but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:22.359 we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:28.079 close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear American Maid, 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:32.120 purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:52.440 as rugged as the places we explore. Bells Man leads 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:58.639 a life of danger. The foundation of a functional society 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:01.080 is that the law of the l and is obeyed 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:05.040 by the vast majority of the population, and much of 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:10.000 this is enforced by uniformed law enforcement that patrols our highways, 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:17.560 cities and towns. Enforcing the law secret ass but there 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:21.320 is an underground layer of crime that is very difficult 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:25.240 for a person in uniform to stop. And that's where 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.240 another layer of guile or cunning action of the good 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:34.639 guys kicks in. At some point in history, the undercover 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:42.520 agent arose your courage, Mrs so we a chrene. I 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:50.720 admire your luck, Mr Bond, James Bond, Mr Bond, I 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.280 suppose you wouldn't care to raise the limit. I have 0:03:54.320 --> 0:04:02.280 no objection. The idea the world famous secret agent like 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:06.480 James Bond is kind of ludicrous, typical of Hollywood. They 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:11.400 glamorized stuff that often isn't glamorous at all. Dr Matthew 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:16.160 Sharp's is a professor of psychology at California State University 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:20.559 and Fresno. He studied undercover agents for a long time. 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.400 Here's what he has to say about old James Bond. 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:27.760 Where James Bond and there is Sean Connery back in 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.200 the day, but the one I like anyway, and there 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:32.880 he is wearing his nice tuxedo in a casino, right, 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:34.880 and he's like before, it's just taller everybody else. And 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.320 get two beautiful women on each army, and so everybody 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:38.760 else wearing jeans on a T shirt. He's in his 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:43.360 tuxedo right, and he's a world famous secret agent. There's 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.040 an old song, the second best secret agent in the 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.520 whole wide world, but he's a world famous secretgyent. Well, 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.960 I wants to ask an actual uh spy and undercover, 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.400 a man who spends his life deliberately being as nondescript 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:57.760 as possible. What would happen to James Bond in real life? 0:04:57.839 --> 0:04:59.679 He didn't even has it. He'd be done in five minutes. 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:02.400 You can't be a world fat of secret agent. There's 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:08.080 no future, but you'd like that recognition, and um, you know, 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:12.200 the clients and services outside police work must be very, 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:14.240 very difficult because you may get medals where you don't 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.040 even get to take from home and there you are 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:19.200 with you know, your the veterans of this and that service. 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.440 You can't talk about it, and those stresses have not 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:27.599 really been addressed, but they're a big problem. There's no 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.279 future in being a world famous secret agent. That's funny. 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:37.320 Understanding the psychology of undercover agents is a brand new field. 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.600 I guess studying it is an indicator that we're in 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:44.159 advanced society. Our needs are met to the point we 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.800 now have resources to study the people hired as law 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:51.800 enforcement that we've commissioned to act as criminals and break 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.880 the law in order to catch the real criminals. When 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:58.240 you start thinking about it, it's a complex space, and 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.400 I'm not sure if that means are society is advanced. 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:07.479 Maybe it's regressing. Undercover work is a necessary evil, one 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:10.480 that we're all thankful for, whether we realize it or not, 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.279 and it lies in an odd philosophical and ethical spot. 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:17.400 It takes a special breed of person to do this, 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.960 and we're learning it often comes at a high cost 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:25.360 to the individual, but a net gain for society. It's 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:27.839 rare that we get a glimpse into the real life 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.080 of an undercover agent. In two thousand twelve, the Kent 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.320 State University Press published a book written by Chip Gross 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.440 titled Poachers Were My Prey. The book is the real 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:44.080 life story of this undercover agent, RT Stewart. It's a 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.640 tell all book, and it's publishing came with its own 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.160 share of controversy. But in it, RT tells about his 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:56.600 top ten covert operations, busting the ruffican outlaws of Southeast 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:02.479 Ohio and West Virginia. Here's off Chip Growth introducing us 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.039 to our t. It just seems like some people in 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.800 this world are perfectly matched for the jobs they do, 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:12.520 and R. T. Store is definitely one of those people. 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.120 But first of all, he's a very skilled woodsman. He 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.000 knows how to hunt, he knows how to fish, he 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:21.600 knows how to trap. When the bad guys see that, 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.240 that is a positive in their mind, you know, Okay, 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.440 this guy is for real. And uh, he's very congenial. 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:29.840 He could get the bad guys to like him and 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.720 trust him very very quickly, sometimes with just within a 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.680 few days. He just got that that knack about him. 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.440 He's a very likable person. Like, what what does it 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.280 take for a person to to have that, to be 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:43.360 able to do that? I'm not sure because I don't 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.440 have it, and I don't think a lot of people do. 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.320 But RT does. He's a real chameleon in that he 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.080 can adjust to a lot of different situations. As he 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:59.440 talked about, he can relate to the kind of scumbag poachers, 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.000 or he can go to Lake Erie and deal with 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.200 marina owners up there and charter boat captains that are 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:08.560 running boats worth tens of thousands of dollars and still 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:12.200 slide in and become a member of that group. So 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:14.840 I think it's a lot of It is kind of 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:18.480 a natural ability, a natural skill, and he's very very 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.800 good at what he does. He can think on his 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.840 feet very very quickly. He mentions in the book that 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:28.840 in every undercover operation that he was on, the poachers 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.600 at one point or another accused him or asked him 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.920 if he wasn't undercover wildlife officer, you know, because they've 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:38.280 always got that in the back of their mind. We 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.240 know we're doing bad stuff. Who's this new guy and 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.760 they're looking at him? Is this the Is this our 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.079 worst nightmare that we don't know about yet? And he 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:51.560 was able to talk his way out of it every 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.280 single time. And when I asked him how he did it, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:56.760 he said, I don't know. He said, it's something I 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:58.719 prepared for, but I knew I was going to get 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:01.760 the question, but every time it came up, I had 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:06.880 to work around it in a different way. RTI. Stewart 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.760 is now in his sixties and he's been retired from 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.040 Ohio dn R for over a decade. I don't know 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.600 how to say this without just saying it. When you 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.640 meet him. He doesn't have the vibe of a career 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.360 law enforcement man. He's got a penful of blue tick 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.959 coon hounds, and he's got duck boats stuffed under every 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:30.040 shed on his place. And his Southeast Ohio draw is 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:34.120 surprisingly thick. But that's exactly why he was one of 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:38.680 the best undercover agents in Ohio dn our history. Today 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.000 his hair is trimmed tight, and it looks like he 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.920 hasn't shaved in a couple of days. But at one 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:48.400 time he looked like a guitarist from zz Top. Here's 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.960 our t I guess as a kid, I used to 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:55.040 watch television, and you know, and I always liked the 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:59.560 I always liked the idea of a ranger or a 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.000 game word or something that nature. And he grew up 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.400 hunting and fishing. Absolutely grew up hunting and fishing. My 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.360 dad was a major. He went in a gun shop 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:09.800 for forty years. And so how did you become a 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:11.800 game where in that? What age were you and what 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:16.520 was your career progression? You know, living in a small 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:18.920 town and got married and I ended up working in 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:20.880 a coal mine. You have to live, You've got kids, 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:22.880 you gotta you gotta make a living. You know that 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.319 wasn't my that wasn't my dream obviously, but you gotta 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:30.400 make a living, and that's how around here, being uneducated. 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:32.040 And so I went to work in a coal mine 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:35.000 and then I left there and went to steel mills, 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:39.240 and uh got laid off in nineteen eighty one. And 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.240 I was twenty nine or thirty. And when I got 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:44.439 laid off, that's when that first time they ever laid 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.440 off my life. I remember telling them people that I 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.839 was going to college and become a game warden. I 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:53.200 was thirty years old when I went to gold. You've 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.200 just learned what are the keys to Artie's success in 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.760 living a life of an undercover agent. He worked in 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.520 a whole mine, in the steel mill for over a decade. 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.440 He'd lived a real life of a rural Appalachian man, 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:10.800 which you can't fake. RTIs a coon hunter, a cat fisherman, 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:13.840 a skilled deer in turkey hunter, and a trapper. And 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:18.720 by the way, Southeast Ohio is considered Appalachia, and as 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:22.240 a surprise to me, it's even considered the South by 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:26.360 those that lived there. And RT has never ice fished 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.000 a day in his life, so it passes Steve Ronelli's 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.800 test R. T was hired by the Ohio dn R 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.120 when he was thirty five years old as a uniformed 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:43.960 game warden. They assigned me to Union County, which was 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:47.160 I didn't even know where Union County was because I 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.640 had never mean much out of this area that was 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:53.280 in the that was west of Columbus, which to me, 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:55.320 that was the city. And the worst thing that could 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.360 have done was said, a give a hill billy with 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:02.600 a badge and sent him to the city. Well, so 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.600 I went up there and they put me in uniform, 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:06.520 and I was up there for about a year and 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.000 a half. I was in uniform, and then I was 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:11.800 always intrigued because I had worked with friends of mine 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.679 that was undercover agents with liquor Control, and I was 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:19.240 always always intrigued about that. You know. RT told his 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.480 supervisors that if there was ever any need for undercover 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.880 work that he'd be interested in the job. He had 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:29.040 no training, but he had reason to think that he'd 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:33.040 be good at It turns out he was right. Keep 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:34.920 in mind, I was thirty five when I went to 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.880 work as a wildlife officer. I grew up in hunting 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:41.719 and fishing all my childhood of life and all my 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:46.679 early adult life, if it flew, swam, or walked, I 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.320 had been involved in it. So with my background in that, 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.920 and I wasn't always an angel. A matter of fact, 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:55.920 they tried to catch me for five years and couldn't. 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:03.560 That's why they heard me. Is that right? So I 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.640 just felt I had the knowledge in the background that 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.440 I knew how outlaws worked. I just felt that I 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.640 could do a better job of catching people. Not saying 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.079 that I didn't have a good career while I was 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.560 in uniform. I did. I just felt I could catch 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.600 people that was more detrimental to the population of the 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.920 wildlife than I could getting you. I was already rough 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:29.560 round the edges, and you're right, you were dangerous. As 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:36.880 an undercover up, I was feared. Uh, did you have 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.040 the kind of confidence that when you set out on 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:44.040 a target target acquisition? It was like, man, that's a 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.720 good question. Whatever it takes to get this guy. Yeah. 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.240 I had the confidence. I felt I had the ability. 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:52.640 I felt I had to know how, and I was 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.000 a pretty good actor. I hunted men for a living. 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.080 That's how I looked at him. I went from hunting 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.559 animals to me when I captured that was my trophy 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:06.640 on the wall. RT has the right to be confident 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.920 and call it like it is, because later he'll reveal 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.440 some of his mistakes. It takes a special person to 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.640 be successful undercover, and as we're beginning to see, Artis 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:20.680 background set him up to be as good an undercover 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.240 agent as was ever made. And as a matter of fact, 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.520 he never worked a case where he didn't get his 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:33.040 target suspect. That's incredible. If you're an outlaw, you wouldn't 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.920 want Artie Stewart after you, but like a black panther 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:40.160 creeping up on you in the night, you wouldn't even 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:44.720 know it was r T. I think with my background, 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:49.360 I could talk the language that poachers and outlaws could understand. 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.360 I knew what they were thinking. I guess I knew 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.160 what they were after I could talk that, and they 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:57.680 knew that I wasn't fake when I talked about it, 0:14:57.880 --> 0:14:59.960 and I was. I was always good at reading Pepe. 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:02.320 I think I was always good at reading people. I 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.680 always felt that I had a good humorous side to me. 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:11.360 People make people like me. And I also discovered early 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.200 on that if you put this outlaw, put them on 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.520 a pedestal that's what they like. They didn't want competition, 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:21.040 but they want to be put on a pedestal. They 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:25.040 wanted esteem from you or anyone. Would that be like 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:30.400 a number one descriptor of what you see that's congruent throughout. 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.480 They all just want to be They want to be 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:36.280 put up on that pedestal. They want to be the 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.560 number one person in their peers eyes. They want to 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:46.640 be the great white hunter. The motivations of outlaws are 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.520 really quite primitive to human nature. They're looking for social 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.680 esteem and for whatever reason, they can't get that inside 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.680 the boundaries of the law, so they've got to cheat 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:00.920 to get it. I want to underst stand what goes 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:05.280 into an undercover operation. In Artis book, I was amazed 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:09.080 at the links he would go to to infiltrate these 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:13.880 poaching rings. On these undercover operations, you would embed yourself 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:18.560 completely inside of these communities, correct. I've heard of operations 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:20.920 where like an undercover guy would like live at his 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:24.480 normal house with his wife and like drive two hours 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:28.400 and show up at a gas station that's playing game boards, 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.120 that's playing undercover and playing under Okay, well so tell 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.840 me that's playing. So tell me what you had to do. 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:38.760 I took I took it very serious. I was I was. 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.680 I took it extremely serious. I would go there, and 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:44.600 I felt the only way to catch these people, you've 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:46.120 got to You've got to be part of them. You 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:48.560 gotta be with them. So I'd go there and find 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.920 a plate and find a place to rent. You want 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.880 to have a target suspect, have a target suspect. We'd 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.280 already have a target list, I say, you know, complaints 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.320 on individuals, and they'll from whatever county the agents put 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.240 together and give us a packet. You know, I need 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:07.320 to look at these guys and see what's going on. 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.320 So that's what we'd do. So we would we would 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:13.840 go in and rent a place in the surrounding area. 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:15.639 We didn't want it too close, but we didn't want 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:17.960 it too far away either, you know, I didn't. We 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.440 didn't want it close enough. We're you know, just the 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.680 walk down the street and walking in in any time, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.639 you know, But but we wanted a close enough to 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:29.320 make it a little effort, you know, for him to 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:31.800 come visit. I remember you saying that you didn't want 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.080 to like live across the street from a poacher because 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.720 he might show up at a time when you're not 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.560 needing him on the phone with your boss or so, 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:42.480 but but far enough away that he'd have to go 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.120 out of his way to come see you. But you're 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:48.840 still in the community. Correct, That's exactly right. Why didn't 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:50.800 nobody tell me that, you know, we didn't have a 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.000 didn't have a book to go by. I think it 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.960 was just instinct instinct. So that's what we do is 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:58.480 rent a place like that. And my shortest project, I 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.000 think it was like fourteen months or twelve months, and 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.400 then so you would you would live there for like years? Yeah? 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.440 A long was one was four years? Four years? Would 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.679 you go back home to try to come home? But 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:13.639 it got the point where I did not want to 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.960 come home. I just it was who wants to come 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:22.119 back to reality? M hmm. I got the point I 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:26.240 didn't want to come home. This is where things get 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:31.040 interesting and take an unexpected turn. What I appreciate most 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.960 about our T is how open he is about his struggles. 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:38.320 It's pretty rare to find a person willing to be 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.119 as honest about himself as our T. At the time, 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.960 there wasn't much known about the psychological effects of living 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.880 a double life, but it turns out r tis experience 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:54.359 of having difficulty going back and forth between reality and 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:58.880 his undercover work is a common issue. Dr Matthew Sharps 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:03.840 wrote a book called Processing under Pressure, Stress, memory, and 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.520 decision Making in law enforcement. He's worked a lot with 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:12.520 undercover agents, but it's an under researched area. I want 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.040 to see what he says about this. We now know 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.520 that brain cells. If you if a brain cell is active, 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.159 what other brain cells are talking to these synaps The 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.600 connections tend to be strengthened. So if you're in the 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:28.000 field for a long time, pretending to be a mafiosi, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.120 pretending to be a drug dealer, what have you, you're 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:33.800 gonna stows. Those habit pattings start to become a relatively 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:37.359 automatic you. Okay, So when you go back home to 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.840 your to your your spouse, your family. Lots of times 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.800 undercover people will emerge back into the instead of word, 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.879 emerge back into their undercover persona, and they don't know 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:52.480 they're doing it. This is usually problematic. An awful lot 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:56.679 of our life is dealing in terms of automated behaviors. 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:01.639 It's possible to be so d undercover for so long 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:06.520 that the functional mechanisms of our identity begin to become scrambled, 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.240 and when you think about it, it's really an odd 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:13.280 place for a human to occupy. Normal human existence is 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.920 based on us functioning honestly in a state of reality. 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:20.080 But people who work deep undercover have to live a 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.560 life which, as it turns out, exerts an extreme amount 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.680 of chronic stress on the body that we weren't designed for. 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.960 If you think about our ancient ancestors, they were hunters, 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:37.080 and hunting presents tremendous acute stress, especially if you're doing 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.320 it with a spear, or a spear has a magazine 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:43.400 capacity of one. Okay, so that's pretty stressful, But it's 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:45.720 two or three days of a persistence hunt, or the 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.200 five minutes of jumping up and taking out a deer, 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:52.120 or back in the day in Irish elk okay, it's cute. Now, 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:54.600 we had to be able to deal with acute stress 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:58.480 because if you couldn't, you couldn't survive long enough to reproduce. 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:02.760 But on ex stress, the symptoms of chronics chronic stress 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.560 don't kill you until you're in middle age or for 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:10.040 what them was old age, and so we don't seem 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:13.480 to have a good way of dealing with chronic stress. 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:16.359 It gets us. One thing is that when you're under stress, 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:19.760 you're in the human fight or flight response, and that 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.520 ups your blood pressure, it ups your heart rate, it 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:25.679 ups your breathing rate. All this stuff is wearing on 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:29.640 the body. It also produces, aside from those three major 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:34.360 chemicals involved, aldosterone, which is to do assault balance, Cortisol 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.560 that gives you more energy, but it also has an 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:42.320 erosive quality on some structures. There's research that indicates cord 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:46.040 assault and have some corrosive agency on a structure in 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:49.280 the brain called the hippocampus where you actually process your memories. 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:52.120 But then you have adrenaline, and that's what it puts 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.720 your body into this higher state of being. It's just very, 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.600 very expensive, and because you're using all of these you're 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:02.240 doing all of this high stress stuff, you tend to 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:07.600 shut down the systems you don't need. Humans weren't designed 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:12.200 for chronic or constant stress, were equipped for short term stress. 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:15.679 And it all goes back to our hunter gatherer roots. 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:18.800 It's easy to listen to our t stories and feel 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:23.040 the excitement and James Bond style intrigue of undercover work. 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.960 But all things come with the cost, and it certainly 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:30.679 did for Ourt. Being an undercover agent is a dirty 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:35.280 job that enables the rest of us to live normal lives, unaware, 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:43.879 even oblivious to what's helping keep things stable. I want 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:47.280 to get back to the nitty gritty mechanics of undercover work, 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:50.640 and what's a bit mind twisting is that the key 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:55.399 to living a lie is telling the truth. The best 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.280 undercover agent and I think any of them will tell 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:00.960 you this, that's been deep undercover or you got to 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:04.520 stick to the truth. You tell lies, but you don't 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:07.959 tell them in a sense. You may you may have 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:11.159 done something. You may just order the time frame, or 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:14.840 you just order the name, but you stick to the 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:18.080 truth of reality what you have experienced, and you never 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:20.640 go wrong because you don't have to remember. And so 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.960 as an big overview, so you've embedded yourself. You have 0:23:24.119 --> 0:23:28.920 your personal story, and then you're trying to infiltrate these 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:32.440 groups of people or a specific person, and you need 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:35.520 them to take you hunting, and you need them to 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:38.240 talk about what they've done. Correct, But did you find 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:42.919 that these guys wanted to talk once you got the credibility. 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:46.560 Usually there was a group. When I say a group, 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:49.680 it might be you know, one, two guys to a 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:53.199 half a dozen guys that was taking it. Once you 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:57.280 got the credibility of some of those lower members of 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:02.000 that gring that helped get you to the top band. Really, 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.520 so you would usually infiltrate by meeting some of the 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:09.080 lower tier guys really and they would bring you to 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:12.280 the leader. Creig. It took me, uh, on one particular job, 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:15.080 you know, I was working, it took me eleven months 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:19.040 to meet the number one guy. But were they protective 0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:24.040 of him? Was he elusive? He just didn't expose himself 0:24:24.040 --> 0:24:26.840