Washington’s unfinished business: Downsizing FEMA and DHS

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2:05So today we have like Ed Sullivan says a really big show. And I'll tell you why. We have what is Dave. Who is Dave? Who's Dave Richardson? He's got a new book coming out. What was he doing? Ladies and gentlemen, he was working with the government. So what could possibly go wrong working with the government? Right? I mean, everything is so smooth. As you could see, everything is so smooth working for the government. And the government never lies. So Dave, we want to welcome you to the National Security Hour. And we want to discuss this new book. And we want to tell the people how screwed up FEMA is. So welcome to National Security Hour. Well, thanks for having me. I greatly appreciate it. I'm really glad to be here to speak with you two gentlemen. Thank you, sir. All right. So Dave, why were you chosen to lead FEMA? Let me ask you that. What qualified you? So number one, I've got a background in strategy.

3:08I was a ground combat officer in the Marine Corps. Couple of different theaters of war. Went to Marine Corps schools. Essentially learned how to plan and build strategies. And do things like mission analysis. That's what I got out of the Marine Corps. And partially due to what I did in Korea, I got into the countering weapons of mass destruction business. And eventually, I was appointed by President Trump in 2020 to be the assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. And then when Trump didn't get back into office, I spent four years doing similar things to countering weapons of mass destruction. And then when he came back into office, I went back to be the assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security for countering weapons of mass destruction. And I was immediately told that they were going to shut it down. And look, I'm a small government dude, partially

4:09because of what you just referred to, Colonel, which is that the government can be a mess. So the smaller the government is, the smaller the mess you have on your hand. So I quickly turned to shutting down countering weapons of mass destruction. I had done a mission analysis on it. I don't want to get into what that is. But it's not as sexy as it sounds. It's pretty simple. You go to all the laws. You forgot what you should do by law. And you only do that. And you match the people to the law and the capabilities. So as I was effectively shutting down countering weapons of mass destruction, the president had expressed the desire to do the same at FEMA, just like it had been done at the Department of Education, not quite shut down, but close, and then USAID. So since I was having a lot of success systematically shutting down counter-buffinism of mass destruction,

5:09when that wasn't happening to the president's approval at FEMA, which he wanted shut down, or drastically reduced and rebranded, they removed the person that was running FEMA at the time and sent me over to do that at FEMA. And I made no bones about that when I got to FEMA. And there was much howling and gnashing of teeth. The day I told them that I had intended to carry out the president's intent, because they knew what that was. It was either to shut it down, or it was to drastically reform it and then rebranded. And I lay out these things in my book, Texas Flood 2025, I think the subtitle is something like Power, bureaucracy, history, and tragedy. So I laid that on in my book, and that's why I was sent to FEMA. So hang on a minute, hang on a minute. So what did you find when you got to FEMA?

6:15As I said in my book, I found people wandering around the seven different floors at 500 C Street, South East, I believe it is, essentially saying that their morale was low and that they couldn't do their mission. And I immediately turned to addressing both of those situations, a note on federal employee morale. That's a corenial problem. It's always, they always have a lone ral. And it's because they have a stinking suspicion that their work doesn't matter. And in some cases, they are right to be spooked because they're often stuck in a position where they're leaderless and no one is pointing out what their mission is and driving them towards that mission.

7:15So instead, they just kind of wander around, complain about their morale. And even if one person is cut from their ranks, they will approach the press and say, we're not able to do our mission because of 18,000 of us, there's only 17,999 left. This almost sounds like V-O-A. When they started cutting V-O-A, it's like, you don't understand. We need to check the birds in Ghana. We have to report on those birds in Ghana that have that special whistle and we just can't report anymore. So you had a plan. When you went there, you had a plan to shut it down. So now we both, Mike and I lived in Northern Virginia. You're in Northern Virginia. We understand the morale. The morale is every year when the government's gonna shut down the world ends. It's Orson Wells. What is that? War of the world. War of the world.

8:16Yeah, the end of the world. We can't pay our bills for the next 30 days and the president sucks. So what was your plan? So my plan, which was very similar to the one I did at Converning Web and some Mass Destruction, and it's pretty similar. The military calls it troop to task. So what do you have to do with your mission and then what are the sub-tasks? And you essentially figure out what your specified task and the sub-tasks and you align the people with the sub-task. And that essentially tells you what your organization chart is going to look like. Most government people, when they have been given a task to reorganize or to reduce their mission. What they'll do is they'll immediately go to the org chart. That is 100% the wrong answer. You go to the law and you figure out what exactly it is. The law tells you to do. And you figure out how many people you need to do

9:17that mission that comes out of the law. And then you build your org chart because otherwise all you're doing with if you're going to the org chart is stirring the pods. And I think that's what my predecessor has done because I don't think you really had an understanding at the strategic level or how to do any type of mission analysis. So he kept stirring the pod that was all he was able to do. So when I walked through the door, I had already had my team at Converning Web and Zadmas Destruction do a mission analysis on FEMA. And we re-drew the org chart. So there were 6,000 people at FEMA headquarters. I quickly discern that we only needed about 2,000 of those. There are another 12,000 FEMA folks in what they call the field, which always makes me scratch my head. When I think of the field, I think, of course I'm a ground combat officer from the Marine Corps.

10:18I think of living somewhere in the woods, but instead these field offices are, many of them, are living in hotels because they're on per-dem. So they're out there living in hotels and they're overseeing their bureaucratic process for handing out FEMA money. And it goes on for years and years. So there was two pots of folks. There was one at headquarters, right quickly discerned, they only needed 2,000 people if that to be doing what 6,000 people were doing. Later on, it took me the summer, I figured out to do with the 12,000 or so. I think it's actually more than that. I think you're getting towards up to 17 or 18,000 people in the field. I finally figured out what they should do. So I started from what the law tells us we have to do. Figure out what those specific things were, match the folks to that. And my plan was to start cutting FEMA.

11:18Definitely ahead quarters down at 2,000 and eventually would have been the field probably down to 4,000 or so. Keep in mind, during Hurricane Katrina, I think FEMA was probably about, all FEMA was about 4,000 people. It has grown to the behemoth it is today, which is somewhere around 18,000 people. And there's reason for that we can get into that later. So that's what I went there to do. Right about the time I got there and began doing that, something called the FEMA Council, the FEMA Review Council stood up. And I collaborated with them as much as I could because they were moving in the same direction as I was. But since it was a committee, and I don't lead things by committee, I knew that it was going to be slow. Their recommendations would be not as pointed and immediate as mine were.

12:19And it would take them a long time to get it done. So that's what I want to FEMA to do. And that was my plan. My plan was to have it down probably half its, I would say by half its size by the end of October 2025, and then probably I would have cut more in the next six or seven months today. If I had stayed, it would be no more than 8,000 people. No. So let me ask you a question, Dave. What was your budget being a FEMA? Well, the budget, get ready for this one. The budget was about 30 billion dollars. Oh gosh. And keep in mind that a million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. I had managed a budget at Converting Weapons of Mass Destruction

13:22that was about 400 million. So now I'm dealing with a part of gold. The money at FEMA is DHS's largest calf that can be slaughtered and then given up for consumption. 30 billion dollars. Now that's kind of a drop in the bucket compared to the Department of War. But for DHS, that is indeed the pot of gold for anybody that can hand it out to get the credit for. So let me ask you, DHS is budget in itself. What is the DHS budget? I don't know what the total budget is. I would be guessing. I mean, anybody could do a quick search online and find out what the budget is. I don't know. I mean, I imagine it's probably double of FEMA, which maybe the whole thing would be $60 billion, but I don't know. Michael, let me ask you a question back when you were in the agency. What was the agency budget?

14:23I have no idea, Phil. You don't remember? I don't know if I even asked. I wanted to know how much money I had to run my operations. And I never thought I would be the U-Hars. How much money did you have? Oh, I think probably the most I ever had was a million and a quarter. That was it? Yeah. Hopefully, you know, the thing is, if it was a problem with terrorism, you'd get all the money you needed. But most years, I came into the end of the year and they had money to give away to people. Instead of giving it back to Congress, the money that's left over, they give to the pack of Stanis or the ties or someone other, some other good friend of us around the world. So it is waste incorporated in some ways. I just looked at FEMA's budget, as I said, it's about double. So it's about 60, somewhere between 60 and 65 billion. I mean, that's DHS. So FEMA had half of the DHS budget.

15:26Wow. That's a lot of money. Hey, we got to take a break a second. So we're coming up on a break here. You know what happens at that point? That's when we ask you, the loyal listeners around America. And if you're outside the country, if you can want to order some stuff too, I mean, we get you could get anything around the world today. We have all kinds of delivery systems. I won't tell you who to pick. But anyway, you could pick any of the items that we have in our shop. We have great products. Nothing there to kill you or choke you or whatever, poison you. We have good health care products. And we have nice books and we have other things. And just visit the shop. We're going to take a two minute break. We're on with Dave Richardson. We're talking about FEMA, as you know, another one of these boom dogls, as they used to say back in the days of Eulistias Grant. And we'll be back in two minutes. And we'll go to the second segment with Dr. Mike, Colonel Mike, APM every Monday on the National Security Hour. Very good conversation. You're listening to how your money is wasted. We'll be right back with Dave. Are you tired of struggling with low energy?

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18:27Ronald Reagan, shine bright as America approaches 250 years. America out loud.news is that place to awaken your heart, soul, and mind to the out loud truth. All right, welcome back to the second segment. I'm going to hit this timer. Mike is ready. Dave is ready. This is very interesting. This is how bad the government is. Now you want to know how we got the $40 trillion besides sending money overseas to allies that are allies besides paying off everybody around the globe. Besides giving money away and throwing money in the street. This is how you get there. You have an agency like FEMA. You have an agency like DHS. Now remember, DHS came into being right after 9-11

19:29which was last week. By the way, last week was 9-11. It was the 25th anniversary. Where are we 25 years later, Dr. Michael Shoya, Osama bin Laden, Hunter? Where are we in the world of terrorism? We're in a war, Epstein Fury. And again, the president said last week in Texas. He said, we should end the Biden government in midterms. It's really going to change what's going to happen. People want to know today, is it rice and beans or beans and rice and it's $6 a gallon. Well, $5 a gallon. Dave's in Northern Virginia. We used to be in Northern Virginia. We're in Valley. It's right now, most of the six for diesel. Again, most of the stuff gets shipped around the country with diesel. So it's costing you more. It'll be more on the shelves. And somehow, he says, suck it up. Damn, if I had his money, I'd suck it up. I'll tell you that. All right, let's continue Dave. So now, again, how do you, let me ask another question.

20:29How did Secretary Christie know him who's no longer there? How did her 100 K memo impact your mission? What was that all about? I want to say this first. I remember when some of the bottom and lawn got killed. I was sitting on my rack in my can in Afghanistan. I'm camp Leatherneck, work camp Leatherneck listening to the BBC on radio that I had carried out of Iraq. It was very interesting, but I'll never forget that. I set up like, holy, he's gone. So anyhow, so the 100 K memo. And I don't know the listeners out there this evening. So what she did was to solve the problem of the American taxpayers dollar being squandered. Very noble problems she was going to solve. I don't think that her solution was ideal because what she said is she was going to personally sign all contracts over $100,000.

21:40Normally that's something that you delegate something reasonable would probably be around $20 million. Because remember, I just kind of laid out what the magnitude of that was a million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. You can see the magnitude there. And nobody, there's nobody even with an auto pen could sign all the contracts with a budget at $30 billion that has to be delegated. Now, oversight of contracts is key, but you've got to make sure that the contracts are still getting out the doors. If you're going to spend $30 billion and you owe people money, it's got to go out the door. And if you put that type of bureaucracy on top of the system, you're not going to be able to pay the people that you need to pay in a timely manner. So she declared and she had a memo out there that she would sign all contracts over $100,000, which began to slow and to her credit.

22:43She was trying to solve the problem, but she only came up with one solution. There was other solutions I think that she could have done to achieve or to solve the same problem, which was the squandering of the American taxpayer dollars. So that's what the $100,000 amendment was. And what happened was when I got to FEMA, I immediately began to ask about hurricane season because I was sent there three weeks before hurricane season. Hurricane started on one June. I cracked a joke one time. And I said, huh, who knew it was hurricane season? Everybody knew it was a joke. And of course, somebody ran to CNN and said he didn't even know. I asked the winter to work with my gosh, what went just didn't bother me. People said, doesn't this body? I'm like, no, I mean, the truth eventually comes out. Don't worry about it. I know history works. We lost you on the mic. We're all there. Hello. I'm here. Okay, got you. Go ahead. So what happened was immediately I got there. I knew my mission was to either shut down or radically transform FEMA, but I also knew it was hurricane season.

23:52So I had the operations officer walk me through a series of war games where I saw exactly what was going to happen during the disaster from historical perspective three or four days before like when the hurricane makes land fall three or four days before and then 10 days after. And on that there was a graph of the money that was spent. And in a hurricane three category hurricane category three, which we used as a model, I recognize very quickly that the hundred thousand dollar memo wasn't going to fly because by day two of a disaster, we were spending five hundred million dollars. I even wasn't going to be able to sign all the contracts. We were going to have to delegate it. So I immediately began thinking how I was going to handle that situation. And as both of you know, leaders go to the greatest point of friction. They reduce ambiguity, which what I was doing with the war gaming. And then they go to the greatest force of point of friction when there are there are problems.

25:05And after we he walked me through a day in the life of a hurricane, as I called it, I did war games for hurricane season with all of the states that we'd majorly impact by hurricanes. So when the floods came in Texas, I knew this is going to this hundred thousand dollar memo is going to be a problem because we were going to start having to write checks for four and five million dollars to get things like search and rescue in place. And I already knew that. So on four July, when the tragedy happened at night, I was on my way to get Eastburg, Pennsylvania in the morning. I got a phone call that said you need to call the congressman and Kerr County, Texas. And I called him because of the flood and we begin to talk. And then I called immediately to nimp kid, who is the emergency manager in Texas. And I said, nimp, what do you need? And he said nothing right now because he already had in Texas search and rescue with the Coast Guard with some FEMA teams that were already in Texas, FEMA trained teams.

26:20And then of course he had the National Guard, but he did say and that was Saturday, that was Friday. And when I talked to him on Saturday, he said, I'm going to need a release of folks for search and rescue from Colorado and Missouri on Monday. And that's when I began to sound in the alarm that we would need to release them and get a waiver on the hundred thousand dollar memo because that's into the millions. I want to bring the list not to speed. Now this flood in Texas, what was that call? Did they have a name? Was that what time of the year was that? So that was in July. And what had happened is anywhere that you have hills, a river and people living in the floodplain, it's prone to disaster because flash floods. So it was a flash flood on the evening of 4 July. It had not rained all that spring in Texas. And I think they estimate that a couple of months worth of rain fell over three or four days in the hill country of Texas.

27:31So that's what happened. It began to rain and it began to rain hard. And the Guadalupe River runs the the the foothills or the the origin of the Guadalupe River is in hill country. So all that water ran off into tributaries to the Guadalupe. Piled up and caused a major major flash flood. When I flew over a week later, I saw huge cypress trees that were dragged down. There were many, many, many houses that were just stripped down to the concrete slab. There were semi trucks, all kinds of stuff that the water just carried away. So that's what happened. And what I did was I essentially overrode Nome's 100K memo. And I just signed the relief that Texas had and sent it down range. And anyway, I gave them their chance, but the bureaucracy got in the way. So I just did it myself.

28:37I'm interested in the hard we will hit. How how how bad did the Congress people come after you or the committees that were in charge? How hard was it for you? It wasn't wasn't hard at all because they were going after the wrong things. For example, they asked me why where I was on a forge level out like everybody. I was somewhere, you know, I was going to get his bird when I found out about it. I continued on the way to get his bird because I wasn't going to fly immediately to Texas because my greatest point of friction was here in DC where I was going to have to kick down the doors of bureaucracy. What bureaucracy I was talking about was the bureaucracy that DHS put in place to handle the 100K memo. So they asked me about that. And then the other thing they said was why didn't I go to Texas? Well, first of all, I don't want to be seen with secretary at Nome. I didn't want to be seen on stage with her. She wanted to run down to Texas. And you know, do whatever she was doing telling that the check was in the mail, but my job was here to make sure that they got the relief they needed because the bureaucracy that had been put in place.

29:50And I talked to him kid who was the emergency manager in Texas that Saturday. And I said, Nome, where do you need me? And he said, I need you there to make sure that the emergency declaration gets to the president on time. And then we get the search and rescue that we need. And I agreed with them because those were the pieces of bureaucracy that I had to outmaneuver. Had I gone to Texas on Sunday or Saturday and wouldn't made any difference at all? All I would have done was gotten away with people that were trying to do their job. And they would have had to show me around. So I didn't care about going to Texas until we got them the relief that they needed because I was very, very, very concerned about the bureaucracy that the hundred K memo had put in place. And that was for me the greatest point of friction. And that's why I stayed in DC to make sure I'd kick down those doors of bureaucracy. And I think everybody understands the type of bureaucracy that goes on in DC, especially folks like yourself.

30:56Well, it's the one thing about bureaucracy in DC is that if you're a successful officer and one that's doing the right thing, sometimes can tell people to go stick it up their nose and just go on with it because people see you're in a place or have been in a place where you've been successful. But otherwise it is a nightmare. It is exactly as you say. It is it is ability to stop important things for for idiot reasons to be quizzed by lawyers, what kind of a mask you're going to put on or some of them in law, and if you capture him so it doesn't pull his beard. That's the kind of if you want to know about craziness. Yes, you don't go to the asylum, go right to the intelligence or I don't know about the military. But in the intelligence system, there's enough stupidity to sink more than one country.

32:01Yeah, I mean, that's the bureaucracy gets in the way so much because everybody is trying to preserve their five. And as I said in my book, a leader's job is to reduce ambiguity. And you do that through training and exercises and being very clear what your intent and the mission is. And then when the shit it's the fan, you go to the greatest point of friction, whether it causes you your life, your job or your reputation. So when the flood happened, there was no doubt in my mind where I needed to be and I needed to be in Washington, DC, so I could kick down any doors of any doors of bureaucracy. So that the state of Texas could get what they want in the emergency declaration, as well as things like search and rescue. And I'm glad I did because I wouldn't have understood the immediacy of having to override secretary known had I been on the plane with her.

33:06So if I, you said 500, you said 500 million dollars, that's a big number, man. Well, for that case, it wasn't 500 million dollars, but it was in the millions. I can't remember exactly what that case wasn't 500 million dollars, but it was a lot. It was far more than $100,000. Let's just touch on this before we go to another break. So we want to talk about what is the relationship between the FEMA flood maps and national flood insurance. Now, as you know, being in Virginia, right next door, our neighbor West Virginia, Southern West Virginia, Charleston, capillary, it's always flooded down there. It's flooded every year. I mean, no matter what, there's always two, three counties and you'll always hear stuff about FEMA. You hear stuff about the national flood insurance. And I mean, this county's flooding for since the 1930s, all right, Dave? So let's just a minute. What is the relationship between FEMA flood maps and national flood insurance? I'm just curious. Okay. So number one, flood maps have nothing to do with safety or precaution.

34:10The most senior people at FEMA that handle the flood maps will tell you the flood maps are not predictive. And therefore, actuary purposes, which means they are used to inform the national flood insurance program, which started in the late 1960s. There was no flood insurance, whether it was government or private between the late 20s and the 60s. That was due to the great flood of 1927 that happened on the Mississippi, which bankrupted all private flood insurance. So from the late 1920s to the late 60s, we tried to engineer our way out of the problem. Then in the late 60s, the government created national flood insurance program. That program essentially spread loaded the cost of the premiums across the country. It was intended to ensure structures that were already in the floodplain, but it backfired.

35:16And what happened instead, because the insurance burden was spread loaded all across the country, folks, and by folks, I mean construction companies and everybody else began to build. In the floodplains, because then if wind or water ruined something, it was somebody else's problem, because the premiums were artificially low. They were set by the federal government. It completely backfired. And that's why you have today the idea of coastal community living all down the coast from southern Virginia to North Carolina, to South Carolina, to Georgia and Florida, and all other places. You have these coastal communities that have popped up on sand bars, because when the houses or the structures blow down, the premiums are so low, because it's somebody else's problem. Somebody else is paying for the premiums. That's why they are low.

36:20We're going to come to the break now, and you know what happens when we take the break. We need you to go visit our sponsors, because this is the only place you get freedom of speech, first amendment. Nobody edits us, nobody tells us you can talk about this guy, this country, that country, whatever. And you get great shows like the National Security Hour, APM every Monday, and we have others on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And you have to show what we're talking about today, government waste, FEMA, and so on. So we'll be back in two minutes, Dave Richardson. Thank you very much. Have you been looking for a healthy snack for on the go? Well, not all energy bars are soft and sugary. Bear bars, or a crunchy, savory bar, made from just six simple natural ingredients. Bear bars are plant-based, organic, gluten-free, contained six grams of protein and are low temperature dried for a unique crunch. And energy bars are based on chocolate or fruit and are held together with serps or sweeteners. To learn more, just visit bearbar.com slash out loud.

37:23I'm Doug Evans, author of The Sprout Book, and I've devoted my life to helping people reconnect with food at its most alive stage, The Sprout. When you germinate a seed, you're not just growing food, you're activating potential. The Sprouts grow without soil, sunshine or fertilizer, right on your kitchen countertop. They're organic, fresh, and cost less than a dollar of serving. Its nature's fastest form of farming, accessible to anyone, anywhere. Discover the joy of growing your own food and the power of living nutrition. Visit TheSproutingCumbi.com and use the code Out Loud for an exclusive offer. All right, welcome back to the final segment on our national security hour, 8 p.m. every Monday with Dr. Mike Colonel Mike. And then we have Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday. New host on Wednesday, Jack Maxxies with us.

38:23He's becoming up by think on a third or fourth show. So welcome back Dave and Mike and let's continue with this conversation. This is amazing. I'd love to hear all these on. Now let me ask you a question. You knew Christine Ohm, you met Christine Ohm. She was ahead of DHS at the time. Did you think, and I mean, you know, give me your honest opinion, was she really competent to run this thing? So look, I told Congress that she did a good job during the Texas flood. And this is why I told them that because she essentially got out of my way. And in that sense, she led well, but only because she got out of my way. I was glad that she flew to Texas. So I didn't have to deal with her while she was there and while she was here. I never really paid much attention to her. In my book, I call her the main act because it seemed to be.

39:23To me, it was the Christie Noam show. And I don't think that that is the appropriate thing for a leader to do. So I know as far as the 100 K memo goes, that was very short sighted. So as it affected me, I kept her at an arms length. I didn't go to the parties at her house or anything like that because. It just wasn't the type of leadership that I had grown up knowing in the Marine Corps. In many cases, the Army as well. Okay, this is not coming from you, David. I just got to throw this in here because a little bit sometimes I like to do satire. It was the Christie Noam show starring Corey Lewin-Davsky. Okay, continue. I had to show one of my buddies one day. Look, whatever rumors there are out there, you know, they're probably just rumors. Yeah, got bigger fish to fry.

40:25But, you know, I don't know what was going on. I never really paid attention. I was focused on shutting down counter weapons and mass destruction, shutting down a radically transforming FEMA, and then dealing with the disasters that happened. Back to the connection between flood mapping and national flood insurance policy as it affects disasters. Look, the flood maps are not about safety and they're not about precaution. They are there to inform insurance. And the insurance premiums are set artificially low because we are all paying for them. So that's the connection there. But what it's done is it's encouraged building in the flood plans. If my uncle, whose house got ruined when the Black River and Arkansas overflowed because he lived on the wrong side of the levy,

41:27had he ever seen camp mystic or many of the places along the Guadalupe River that got destroyed? He would have said something to the fact of David. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But I know a lot about rivers. And someday there's going to be a flash flood here. And a lot of people are going to suffer. But instead, we've built all these communities on the artificial back of national flood insurance policy because it's a federal program and it causes us to feel some type of top cover from the federal government. It's not top cover at all. All it is is cheap insurance made artificially low because somebody in Iowa, Washington state, Arkansas is paying for the low premiums for folks to live, the coastal community living. That's why it's low. And that's the truth behind the flood maps.

42:29They are not for safety and they are not for precaution. They are for actuary tools and they are not predictive. Then we'll like, you know, going off to pass the second like property tax. It's all actuary. Nobody knows what it's all the metrics are. They tell you you're paying to build schools. And then they tell you we haven't built the school in 20 years. So where's all the money? All right, continue. This is a great conversation. Go ahead. So as far as, you know, the overall leadership, I mean, I would just say I wasn't impressed, but I didn't pay much attention because I had my own things that I was doing. I mean, they had their own crowd and I just wasn't part of it. Much of it's from my background. I mean, even Marine Corps, we laughed a lot and you know, we played a lot, we drank a lot. But in the end, we were doing a serious business,

43:29which was killing that enemy and keeping our Marines alive. In an environment that's very tough. And it's a very tough environment because as I look at it, America is not one, a protracted shooting war in 80 years. It's like a Michael tested that right? Michael. I think I think it's closer to the last hundred years. Well, since the war two, which is 80 years. Yes, exactly right. You know, if if if you were a dainn that had gone Viking, it was very important for you to win. Because when you won, you got gold silver, slaves and other plunder. And you garnered more men to your command. But as soon as you began losing, they found other yarrows or heralds to follow. But in our case, we haven't won a protracted war.

44:33We're attracted shooting war in 80 years. And it's very difficult to lead Marines in some of those situations. And that's in a serious business. I never really felt that DHS headquarters was up to serious business. So I just kind of kept them at arm's length. And I did the things that I had to do. I didn't get to shut FEMA down or radically transform it. Because somehow magically that was handed over to a committee. And as both of you know, as soon as something is handed over to a committee, it's not that serious anymore. No. Imagine President Trump running the country with a committee. And he would never do such a thing. He runs it as he sees fit. And once the committee is established, that is a form of bureaucracy that is normally at the death now of whatever it's supposed to do. That's absolutely the case. Colonel, I have a question.

45:33And I think our listeners would be interested in if you have any information to share on it. And that's all the stories that came up. I think it was a hurricane that hit North Carolina. And they were saying with some detail that FEMA people, FEMA field officers were stealing and preventing people from going to their houses and even killing people. Did you run into any of that? You know, I had heard about those things. I don't know. I don't think killing people is true. But I will tell you what has come out. I think just in the last month, we finally determined after two and a half years or whatever it's been, that there were indeed FEMA people that were passing up houses that had Trump signs in their yard. Yes. And that was just wrong. That's the wrong to do. So I don't know about those cases.

46:33Because that gets into criminal. And when folks suggest criminality always look for just sheer incompetence. So it's normally not by intent. It's just by plain stupidity. So I don't know about those things. In fact, I hadn't heard that. But I do know that I think we've recently concluded that in fact, or indeed, FEMA personnel were passing up houses that had Trump signs in their yard. Dave, how did you get a point to the position you did? I'm just curious. I don't know if you keep a few key people that were already in the administration or in the Trump circle. I don't, I mean, I never really cared to hang out at Mar-a-Lago. I like to hang out in smoky bars. There's still a few of them around here. One of them is the 219 11 Alexandria where there's live music and wild people. That's kind of the cryo-like. But I do, I did know some people in the administration and they kind of recruited me.

47:37But look, becoming a political appointee is not that hard. You just have to know somebody. But leading is hard. And so you've got a lot of political appointees that get in these positions with no leadership experience at all. So not only are they dealing with the federal government, which is already a bureaucratic mess, they walk in many of the political appointees with no leadership experience at all, which only makes the situation worse, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican and happens that on both sides. To become a political appointee, you have to know somebody. You don't have to have any leadership capability at all. And that's reflected a lot of the buffoonery that goes on in the political ranks and it gets combined with the buffoonery that already is happening in the federal government. And you have a nuclear explosion of buffoonery.

48:41Okay, let's talk a little bit about fentanyl. Are you really the guy who did World War? Did you do the legwork on fentanyl? Yeah, I'm the guy that did the legwork on fentanyl. And so I think it was like January 21st. I said, because of my position at counter-weapons of mass destruction, I had the authority to call together a working group. And I don't really do things by committee, but I wanted to pull all 17 components on board. It took me two weeks and we had come to the conclusion the problem was, the problem we were trying to solve was that the major cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 was the overdose of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. I think it pretty much reads like that in my memo. What to do about it? And we came to the conclusion of, at DHS, we were already doing everything we could about it. So it needed to go to the national level.

49:41We put it together. I got all 17 components to agree with Tom Hommett's help. We kicked it up the headquarters and I never heard anything. Yeah. And because I know what silence means, I made a hard copy of it and handed it to Tom Hommett. Tom Hommett eventually took our recommendation to the White House and to the president. And in December of last year, I got a phone call that said, Hey, the legwork you did on making fentanyl having declared a weapon of mass destruction. Help folks convinced the president to make that the policy. And that's what we gave you a quote. Was that Tom Hommett that called you? It was somebody with a very similar name. Looks a lot like him. Okay, got you. I love Hommett because Hommett was the only guy at DHS with more than the end of the thought of blood in him than I have. I mean, he's short guy. He's kind of gruff.

50:41He's got this big head. He's a great, but he was always laughing. It's a really good dude. He's really serious about what he does. Yeah, he's an honest. He's the honest broker. There's a couple of questions I want to hit. We only got five minutes to go. All right. So why did you resign? And why do you think FEMA? What do you think FEMA would look like in two years? Just give me that. Okay. Number one, I resigned because I was not allowed to radically transform or get rid of FEMA. That had been turned over to the FEMA council. All I was there for at that point was to get DHS through the hurricane season. Number two, I resigned because I refused to work for Chrissy. No. I just bought out refused to have today. Monday after Monday evening, sorry. I'm on Monday evening, the 14th of September. Had I stayed in office and not resigned and been given the authority to either shut down or radically transform FEMA.

51:47FEMA would be at least half its size, if not mostly gone. I would have I would have laser focused them on their mission. Got rid of the fact I was dealing with a obese government agency. I was not able to put on a diet or exercise to make it healthy again. And that's where FEMA would be today. I had the plan in place. I had the people around me that were willing to do it. And some of them, by the way, were FEMA. But there are people in FEMA that know what FEMA's problem is, that know what the federal government's problem are writ large. And they were ready to help me do it. But the council took it up. And I will say that the council's recommendations will likely never come to fruition. Because the confusion and the bureaucratic entrenched mentality at FEMA is in no way capable of carrying out the council's recommendations to the president.

52:57That would have been fast and furious. I was very fond of those. And those like me, they liked what I did. It kind of went as a mess. Struction. I met with Steve Davis, Elon Musk is one of his right hand guys. I showed him what I had planned for FEMA. He liked it. I would have executed it. And it would be radically different today. Instead, they're in a go long to get along situation. And they're in a great fear of FEMA. Because any time you remove even one person, they run to the media and say, we can't do our mission now. So most people there are actually captives of FEMA. It's kind of a Helsinki system. Helsinki syndrome in some way. Because when you're in charge of FEMA. If you don't have any intestinal fortitude, you are indeed their captive. And that is what's going on right now. There is nobody in the Department of Homeland Security with the intestinal fortitude.

54:00Or the know how to carry out even the council recommendations, which paled in comparison to what I would have done at FEMA. Wow, that's amazing. Hey, I think we both can agree. Homeland Security investigations, H.S.I. is a great organization. I mean, these guys bring it up to the AG. And when I was there working with that, Eric hold the dropped every case. Now we're not going to prosecute. Now we're not going to prosecute. And today, one of our biggest problems within Homeland Security investigations are all these fraudulent H1Bs and every other letter that follows, L4s or whatever. And we're being invaded. You know, we talk about the open border, you know, with what comes over the border from Mexico and all the immigrants and the millions of people that came in under Biden. But we don't talk about the legitimacy of the fraud that comes in here. You know, and you know that being around H.S.I. So Mike, I'm going to give you the final word. We got to cut it off. Go ahead.

55:00You know, I don't know what you found, sir, but I found it going through my career in extraordinarily unadult working force. In the sense that if you didn't stop and say that child, child, yeah. It was, it was a very discouraging thing, I think, to a lot of people if they didn't have someone that could take the blame for them, if something went wrong. And I kind of managed in a way that said, listen, I'll take the blame as long as he weren't fucking up or, you know, something illegal. But my God, at all levels from, you know, from operators to analysts to every other sector. We're not raising adults anymore. It doesn't seem to me. Their childlike, and I told somebody one time, what they want is to never be blamed for anything so they can keep their job.

56:00And they're always howling. The federal employees are always howling about some, you know, imaginary wolf out there so that the thing, things go awry. They can say, I told you so. But the wolf was actually only a symbol with hair on it. All right, David, you said we want to say thank you for coming on the National Security out for terrific guests. And thanks for being patient too. Thank you. All righty. And thank you for joining us, you the listener. Thank you for joining us on the Mission of National Security out. It's the tip of the spear in the epic battle to defend the United States of America. It is a great show tonight. I mean, send it to your friends when you hear it when it goes to podcasts. Another waste of our money. Thank you very much. We'll see you next week Monday. Looking forward to it. Bye bye now.