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EP347: Peter Forcelli - The Whistleblower · Respark Your Life

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Leadership should be despite popularity.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: When something's wrong, you speak up and you try to fix it.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: So I thought I was showing leadership, but I guess people in the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Department of Justice disagreed.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Hello, this is Raymond Aaron, New York Times, top 10, bestselling author,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: bringing you Respark Your Life podcast, the world's premier podcast to ignite
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: the fire, to allow you to live life on your own terms every single Thursday.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I bring you a multimillionaire world famous celebrity to teach you
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: about the most fascinating ways
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: in order to live a far better life.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Every single Thursday, you just need to subscribe
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: by hitting the subscribe button.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I'll see you every Thursday to re-spark your life.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's Raymond Aaron
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: with another episode of "Re-Spark Your Life."
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: A stealth genius,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: someone you would never find out about
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: unless you tuned in to my episodes every single Thursday.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And who am I bringing you today?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Peter Forcelli.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: He's the author of "The Deadly Path,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: How Operation Fast and Furious
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: and Bad Lawyers Armed Mexican Cartels."
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: He's a retired ATF deputy assistant director
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: and former New York Police Department homicide detective.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: During his 35-year law enforcement career,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: he worked his way up from just a beat cop to detective
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: before going on to serve as a special agent for the United
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: States Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Firearms, and Explosives.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Before his retirement, he served as the head
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: of training for the agency.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: He's also been involved in the exoneration of eight people who
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: wrongfully arrested and wrongfully convicted in Bronx, New York for murders they did not
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: commit. And shockingly, one of them includes a man that he himself helped arrest nearly
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: a quarter of a century earlier, when evidence of that man's innocence surfaced. Mr. Fercelli
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: helped each of those people win their freedom, while also identifying and working to help
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: prosecute the actual killers. Wow. Mr. Fercelli is a survivor of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: World Trade Center and the lung cancer that he later developed because of his work in the rescue
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and recovery efforts at Ground Zero. He is a recurring guest at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And now he is a guest, maybe a recurring guest, who knows, on Respark Your Life.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: So, Mr. Forcelli, you've had a wild life. There's lots of people who've been in law
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: enforcement for three or four decades, but you seem to go out of the boundaries. You seem to do
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: that which others don't do. When you were young, I want to go back to where this started.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: When you were young, were there some signs that your teachers noticed, or your parents noticed,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: or your football coach noticed, or something that you would be different from other people?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Not really. I mean, you know, they knew I always wanted to go into law enforcement,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and a lot of that was from being a kid watching police shows on TV and thinking that reality was
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: like television, when it's actually a lot more boring being a police officer than what you see
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: on television. But, you know, I always was someone who wanted to help others. So I think that stood
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: out. Like I was never a troublemaker, never got into fights, really. But beyond that, you know,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it's just something I always wanted to do. But I don't know if that stood out as much as a child
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: as it did, you know, when I took the job. Okay, so you took the job, you got into the flavor
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: of being into law enforcement, helping other people. And one day you realized that you
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: weren't helping other people, you were actually part of wrongfully convicting other people. Now,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I was laughing at the absurdity of it, but I certainly wasn't laughing at the horrors that
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: those eight men underwent. How did you feel the instant you saw the new evidence that showed
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: that they were not guilty? Well, in each of those cases, the only one that I was involved in
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: arresting was a gentleman named Edward Gary, who was arrested for the murder of a retired detective
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: based on the testimony of two witnesses. And that was the only evidence that existed at the time.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: And the interesting part of that was that there was description of another gunman who was never
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: identified. Well, later on, that person was arrested and the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: unidentified gunman and confessed to his role in the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: murder. Now, this was long after I even left the NYPD. And what
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: had happened is he confessed to federal prosecutors, and federal
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: prosecutors started to look at the homicide and realize someone
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: was arrested and charged in the state. So they reached out to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: me. And we worked to identify who the actual killer was. And
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that the two witnesses picked out someone
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: who was a lookalike.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So Edward Garry wasn't the shooter,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: it was someone who looked very much like him,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: a guy named Steven Martinez.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: And once we knew this,
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  Speaker 1: 'cause we showed the photo to the person
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  Speaker 1: who confessed to the crime,
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  Speaker 1: and he admitted he'd never seen Edward Garry
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: before in his life.
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  Speaker 1: And it was pretty compelling.
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  Speaker 1: And we found some other people
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  Speaker 1: who were also involved in the planning of that murder,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: who also said they never saw Edward Garry in his life.
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  Speaker 1: So at this point, I realized that witnesses
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  Speaker 1: had picked the wrong person out.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: innocently. They didn't do, you know, to frame him. The interesting part of that was the prosecutors
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: would not relent. They would not let Edward Gary out. So this turned into a several year battle
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: to get him out of prison. The crazy part of it was in the middle of that battle, as you mentioned
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: in my bio, I came down with lung cancer and I had already testified at two different hearings
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: to try to get Edward out and it just kept getting kicked down the road. And I was concerned I had
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: my lung removed and I was concerned that I would die before the third hearing came about.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Finally, at the third hearing, the judge realized that I had enough evidence to prove that Edward
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Garry was innocent, that he threw out the conviction.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Appallingly, the Bronx District Attorney's Office decided to retry him.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Oh.
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  Speaker 1: So I then wound up being a witness for the defense.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And amazingly, once the case was turned over to the jury, in less than 40 minutes, the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: jury picked the foreman and acquitted Edward Garry.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: They found him innocent.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And it was amazing because the jurors were tearful to know what he went through.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: He sat in jail for 25 years just because he looked like somebody else.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: The sad part is, after he was released from prison, prison life does things to you.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: He came down with a little bit of a drug problem and he wound up suing the city of New York
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and the New York State Department of Corrections and winning.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And less than 30 days after winning several million dollars, he died of sepsis because
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: he was using intravenous drugs because he couldn't cope with being a free man.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: So a horrible thing.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And again, we followed the evidence.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: There wasn't much evidence at the time.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: When new evidence came about, I felt the duty to fight for his innocence.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was part of that process that put him in jail.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: But what blew my mind is how the district attorney's office wanted to keep him in jail,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: despite overwhelming evidence.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And during that case, by the way, again, the second defendant was arrested by federal agents.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: So when the federal government was working with me to try to get Edward Gary out, the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: local prosecutors in the Bronx lied to the US Attorney's Office.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: They lied to the judge.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: It was appalling to me to see how some offices, I guess prosecutors, they're more concerned
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: batting average than they are justice. Now, in the other exonerations, I wasn't involved in the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: initial arrest, but what happened was I would investigate crimes and have people confess to me
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: about things they were involved in. And when people do that, you don't just take them at face
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: value, you have to go out and corroborate what they're telling you. So in these instances,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: in one case, we had a guy who told us that he was involved in murdering a cab driver.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Well, we went to go try to find that file. And we found out that people had been arrested for
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: murder, five people in fact.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Same thing happened though.
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  Speaker 1: Once we got him to confess, we were able to corroborate some of the evidence.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: The district attorney's office fought us on letting these five people out of prison.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: One of them was a woman, the others were men.
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  Speaker 1: They had nothing to do with the murder.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: They were picked out by an informant who said that one of them had confessed about the murder
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to them.
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  Speaker 1: The amazing thing was that when we did our follow-up investigation, the woman said she
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: observed the murder from her bathroom window.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: You couldn't even see the crime scene from her bathroom window.
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  Speaker 1: It goes to show you how thorough the original investigation was.
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  Speaker 1: And then in two of the other exonerations, we arrested a man for six murders, and he
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: confessed to those six murders.
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  Speaker 1: And what happened was we found out that people had been arrested for two of those murders,
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  Speaker 1: and they weren't involved.
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  Speaker 1: Luckily, in those cases, the district attorney's office came and interviewed myself, and they
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: this person who we found, and they let those people out of prison.
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  Speaker 1: So it wasn't as much of a fight as getting Mr. Gary out or getting Eric Gliston and the
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  Speaker 1: other four people out, Kathy Watkins.
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  Speaker 2: Peter, what's the lesson?
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  Speaker 2: It scares me to death that I could just happen to look like somebody and go to jail for 25
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  Speaker 2: years.
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  Speaker 2: What's to learn?
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  Speaker 1: The lesson to me is that police officers and investigators can't get tunnel vision.
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  Speaker 1: If a witness picks somebody out or an informant tells you
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: that somebody did something,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: that you should follow all the available leads.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: 'Cause what happens is if you look at the cases,
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  Speaker 1: once I got involved,
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  Speaker 1: obviously we're pulling the old police investigations
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  Speaker 1: and looking through all of the files and everything.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And the sad part is in each of them,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: there was some indication that someone else
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: might've done it or other names came up.
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  Speaker 1: And when you look back, 'cause I did mention,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: or you mentioned in the biography that we did prosecute
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the actual killers in all of these cases.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: In all of these cases, the actual killer's name
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: came up somewhere during that investigation.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Because of an informant or a witness,
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  Speaker 1: the police officer's got tunnel vision.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously the cases go to a jury too.
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  Speaker 1: So I mean, it shows that there's many levels
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: where things need to get better.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: The police officers need to do a more thorough investigation
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: and so do the prosecutors, you know?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: 'Cause the prosecutors, they take those cases to trial.
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  Speaker 1: And then the sadder part is when there's evidence
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: that someone who's sitting in jail is innocent,
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  Speaker 1: prosecutors should take a much more robust posture
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: towards looking at that evidence and being humble
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  Speaker 1: and realizing that sometimes
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the justice system makes mistakes.
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  Speaker 1: What I have found in each and every occasion is
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the prosecutors are the ones that dig in the hardest
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  Speaker 1: to keep that innocent person in jail,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: more so than even the police do.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: - Oh my gosh.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: - Very interesting thing to see.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: - So what you're saying is the district attorney
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: has to clean up its act.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: My question was, what can I do as an innocent person
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  Speaker 2: never knowing if a minute from now
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  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be thrown in jail?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: - Get a good lawyer and make sure that your lawyer
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: is communicating with the police to make sure
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: if there are other directions that they could have gone in
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that those leads have been exhausted.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: 'Cause again, in each one of those cases
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: where the wrong person went to jail,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: there was some indication as to who the actual killer was.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: - Now, you've dedicated your life to decades
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: of law enforcement and doing it well,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: and being humble, and looking at evidence,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: and being kind and wanting to make the world a better place.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: But weirdly, you're known for one act.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Tell us about that interesting act,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: which is the title of this episode, "The Whistleblower."
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: - Sure, well, I was an agent in New York,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: did a lot of cases involving people misusing firearms,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: many, many, many cases.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: And then I promoted from New York,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and by that time I had 22 years of law enforcement experience
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: out to Phoenix, Arizona.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: And when I got there, almost instantly,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: what I saw was that the prosecutors there
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: were not very interested in prosecuting people
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: who were trafficking guns to the Mexican cartels.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: So for about three years,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: my agents would do what police officers
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: do all over the country.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: They would get information from licensed gun dealers
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: about people trying to smuggle guns.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: We would stop the cars of these people.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: We would get confessions from them.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: We would seize the firearms,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and we would recommend that those people be prosecuted,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: but more often than not, we would be told,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: oh, we'll indict it later,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: or hey, we're not gonna take this case
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: for some excuse or another excuse.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: So then the same US Attorney's Office,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: several months into my tenure there,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: came up with this new policy
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that if the firearms that are smuggled
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that have been recovered in Mexico.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: If we were up to identify the people who smuggled them there,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't prosecute those cases
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: because in their mind, the corpus delicti,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the body of the crime, was in Mexico.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: They were the only United States Attorney's Office
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: in the country to take that position,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: which was troubling because there was a lot
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: of firearms trafficking to Mexico
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that had gone on for years,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: involving people who were called straw purchasers,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: which means that someone who goes to buy a gun
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: for someone else, not for themself.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: It's illegal, you can't do that.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: The gun dealers don't necessarily know that
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: because they don't have ESP,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: they can't read somebody's mind.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So many times these guns would be purchased
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: by straw purchasers, handed to a trafficker,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the trafficker would then traffic it to Mexico
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and it would be found at crime scenes,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: meaning someone was shot or killed.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So that became a problem.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And then we also in one instance had a gun dealer,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: like an actual licensed gun dealer
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: who we determined was corrupt.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: He was allowing firearms to be trafficked to Mexico.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: He was helping coach traffickers on how to evade ATF
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and law enforcement.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: They declined to prosecute that case.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Well, after three years of that,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, we tried to take the cases when we could
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to county prosecutors or state prosecutors,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: but the US Attorney's Office for my entire time there
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: was not taking these cases and that was their job.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Well, in 2009, Phoenix became the capital
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of home invasions and kidnappings for the United States,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: actually for North America, only behind Mexico City.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: So not a distinction that the city of Phoenix liked.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I had some experience investigating home invasions,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: so my team was kind of retasked.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: We no longer were to investigate firearms trafficking,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: we were gonna investigate home invasions.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And after years of fighting with the US attorneys
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: always trying to get them to do their job,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: to me that was a welcome change.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So but anyway, a new group was stood up
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: to do what we were doing,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: which was to try to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Now, as I said earlier, we would stop the cars,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: we would get confessions, we would seize the guns,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: but very few people went to prison.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: This new group took a different strategy.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: They decided to just document who was purchasing the guns
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and to allow these guns to show up at crime scenes
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and try to put pins on maps and tie those scenes to cartels.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: And then this plan would be to take down
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: one of the cartels.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Now, we didn't know, 'cause we weren't in that group
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: exactly what was happening until the time
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: where in December of 2010,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: where a border patrol agent named Brian Terry
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was murdered with one of the guns
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that was smuggled by this group.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: So at that point, someone from within that group
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: contacted the office of Senator Chuck Grassley
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: and said, "Hey, the people that I'm working with
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: "are allowing guns to fall into the hands of the cartels."
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: My supervisor, the head of the Phoenix office at the time,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: had a meeting, and at the meeting he told us
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that we needed to be cautious of this whistleblower,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: and that the US Attorney's Office was upset with him
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: for reaching out to the Senate oversight folks,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and that he was likely to be indicted.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: And at this point I realized, wait a minute,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: we referred dozens upon dozens upon dozens
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of cases involving firearms traffickers
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: to these prosecutors and they refused to prosecute them,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and now they're gonna prosecute this guy,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: John Dodson for blowing the whistle.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So then what happened was I went home that night,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: spoke to my wife and decided,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: well, I needed to reach out to the Senator's office
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: and tell them that John was telling the truth.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: 'Cause all the way up to Barack Obama and Eric Holder,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: they were saying that ATF never walked guns,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: that it was a lie, that John Dodson was lying.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: The problem was that John wasn't lying.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: So at that point I stepped forward
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and became a whistleblower and talked about
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: not only what was going on with that case
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: when I learned about it after Brian Terry's death,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: but how for years, when we brought legitimate cases
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: involving firearms smuggling to that US Attorney's Office,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that they just chose to not do their job.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And the ironic thing was, like I said, for years,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: we were told that once the gun made its way to Mexico,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: that the case was dead,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it was the body of the crime was the gun.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: This team, which was working hand in hand
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: with those same prosecutors,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: like the flip of a switch,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: decided the strategy was to let the guns go to Mexico.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So it just, it made no sense to me.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: But as a result of that disclosure,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I wound up being accused of many things,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: including perjury, because they said
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: that they never did decline those cases.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Thankfully, they did in writing.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: So I spent four years fighting to clear my name
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: after speaking to the congressional investigators
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: and getting involved in blowing the whistle.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Ironically, what I found out later, though,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and didn't know at the time,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: was that John Dodson, the whistleblower,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: had himself walked six guns,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: allowing them to fall into the hands of traffickers.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And that's what they were considering indicting him for.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: But the reality was that John,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: despite that serious lapse in judgment,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: did blow the whistle legitimately
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and showed some heroism in doing so.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And the thought of him being indicted
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: was just something that I couldn't stomach,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: especially as a leader in a law enforcement organization.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: They might not have liked what he said,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: but what he said was true.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And they had a duty to fix it, not to bury it.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: - For God's sakes, when people try to do good
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: law enforcement, which is what law enforcement officers are supposed to do,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: they get into trouble doing good. And if they just let things go, let guns go,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: let guns be smuggled, lie and and resist letting innocent people out of jail,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: they're okay. When they do bad things, they're okay. When they do good things,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: they get attacked. Yeah, well the funny thing that you'll appreciate is after
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: blowing the whistle, like they were more upset with me than they were with John Dodson. And
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: John was the initial whistleblower. He's the one that brought it to light. So I was puzzled by that.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And I had a person was an ally. So I don't want you to think that that he was part of the problem.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: But the ATF chief of staff was a gentleman named Joe, wonderful human being. And he was on my side
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: through this whole mess. Some people were some weren't. And Joe explained to me because he was
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: very well connected at the Department of Justice. He's like, Pete, the reason they're really upset
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: with you is because you're in management. And that just puzzled me. Like if there's something wrong,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: like something where this program is just ill thought out and it's dangerous and it's
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: endangering the public, I would think that they would want a leader to come forward.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: But instead, they were upset with me because I was in a supervisory position and that,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: you know, that John was just a regular agent. So they were less upset with John than they were
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: with me, which, like I said, I mean, leadership should be when you're, despite the popularity,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: when something's wrong, you speak up and you try to fix it. So I thought I was showing leadership,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: but I guess people in the Department of Justice disagreed.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: This is so insane. Now, I'm a Canadian, you're an American. Is it? This is a horrible question. I
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: don't know how on earth you're going to answer it. But is this deception and deceit and underhandedness
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: in law enforcement, is it an American thing? Or is it true all around the world in every country?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, first I'll say I had the pleasure of serving up in Canada for two years. I was the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: ATF representative to Canada, where I covered the eastern part of the country. So from Manitoba to
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the water, so I worked extensively with the OPP, with the Montreal Police, the Toronto Police
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Service, wonderful people. Our justice systems are very similar, but they're not perfect.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: What I'll say is, I think, again, it not being perfect, it's better than what I've seen in
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: most other parts of the world, other than perhaps the UK, which I think is also very
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: similar to us.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I've seen law enforcement, I worked a bit in Mexico.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: The police down there are very, very corrupt on many levels.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: So I, you know, and I've similarly in certain South American countries.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: So are we perfect?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: No.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Is it an American thing?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I think the American justice system and American law
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: enforcement certainly can improve.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: But I think we're fortunate here to have a good system compared
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: to what I've seen in other parts of the world.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: - OK, I'm going to ask you another very unpleasant
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: question.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Let's go back to the eight people who were wrongfully
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: chosen, wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: and worse, the DA didn't want to release them.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Was it a racial issue?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Were all eight of them black?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: - Edward Gary, the one who I helped arrest,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: was ironically a mixture of Hispanic and white,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and he looked white.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: He's the same skin tone as myself, in fact.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: The others were all black
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: or a mixture of black and Hispanic.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: But the thing that I think is important to realize
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: is that the witnesses who picked them out
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: were also black and Hispanic.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So the police at that time were following,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: like I said, the evidence, and the evidence was
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: eyewitness identification and little else.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: The thing that I think would have possibly
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: made those cases better, and I don't think it's,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: like I said, I don't think it was like anybody being framed.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: It was laziness.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Like I said, with the five people who were in prison,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: they took the word of this informant,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: who was a Latin American woman,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: without ever bothering to go into her bathroom
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and see if you could actually see the crime scene
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: from the window that she said she's witnessed it from.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: So she picked people out, swore to it, you know,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: swore in court, the jury believed her.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: No one took the time to go and see,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: could she have actually seen what she saw
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: from where she said she saw it?
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: - Wow.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: So I've got another difficult question for you.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: As a result of this interview,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: should I be frightened and depressed
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: by the flaws of the American justice system
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Or should I be uplifted that there are brave and honest
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: people like you?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: How should I walk away from this interview?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: - Well, I think a little bit of both, actually.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, is it scary that you can be wrongfully accused
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of something and wind up in prison?
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, of course.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Is it-- are most police definitely
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: above board and honest?
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Does laziness or some degree of incompetence
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: factor into some of these things?
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Like I said, the bigger concern for me,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and again, I'm looking at it from being mixed up
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: in these things several times,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: was again, the prosecutor's offices.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: 'Cause when you look at American justice system,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: the lawyers are viewed as kind of the point of the spear.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Like the police are out there on the ground
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: doing their thing, but you always believe
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that the lawyers are gonna be more measured,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: more thoughtful, like to sort through the evidence better
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: and to make good decisions.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: But what I've seen is that's not always the case.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: So, you know, but look, would I be worried
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: about like winding up in prison?
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Would be at the back of mind.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't happen very often.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I've arrested over 1200 people.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: - Oh, wow.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: - Yeah, and yeah, only one was a person who I, you know,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: at the time thought was a legitimate arrest.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: It turned out not to be.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a small issue,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: whereas if you go to some other countries,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: they'll arrest you, they'll plant evidence on you.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Mexico is one of them where you'd be concerned
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: about just any contact with law enforcement
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: might be a little bit frightening.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: - Wow.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Peter, you're a brave and honest
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: and noble and selfless character.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: - Well, I did what the taxpayer expected of me.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: no more, you know?
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: - No, you did more.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: You did more because there is a rule
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: that if you walk into a room that has certain rules,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: but the rules are being disobeyed,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: then you will fall down to that lower level of disobedience.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: And you didn't, you didn't fall down.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: You didn't say, well, everyone's eating at their desk,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: even though you're not allowed to,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: so I'm gonna eat at my desk.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Or, "Well, everyone does this, so I'm going to do it too."
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: You didn't.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: You didn't allow yourself to be lowered.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: You are a champion.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I love you.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: And my dear friend who recommended
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: me to interview you, I'll love him forever for recommending
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: you to me because this interview is so powerful.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: It has the purpose of waking me up,
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure waking up my subscribers.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I hope it does.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, indeed.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: Wow, I sure hope you enjoyed that fascinating episode.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: Please make sure you subscribe
• 26:23
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• 26:26
  Speaker 3: that they will probably like it as well.
• 26:28
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• 26:32
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• 26:34
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• 26:36
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• 26:41
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