Anything we can learn from that, Tracy, or how the police department will handle an investigation like this one?

Yeah, so I think it also just to Steve's point, if I could elaborate on that just a little bit in terms of the school.

One other way that this individual could have gone in, although obviously I don't know for certain, is typically in most schools you can open the door.

And so there may have been students who were waiting, maybe being checked out by parents.

maybe sick students who are waiting to be picked up.

So we don't know how far this shooter may have gotten into the school.

In terms of response time, I think that is something that a lesson that they learned, not that they didn't have a good response time in the Safeway shooting.

What is your biggest worry tonight?

That's probably why then that you became such a good spy as well.

Probably.

[laughs] And so I was always okay with that.

At the FBI, they had given me sort of these, we call them clearing cases, which it's, like, not fun.

It's, um, cases that have been open forever and no one's bothered to close them.

I mean, most new agents have to do that, and that's, that's fine.

But there was one woman who was super, super mean to me, like literally all the time.

Yeah

He, he, he, He announced the plot was, was foiled, and the, the Secret Service seemed to come down on him quite a bit for announcing it before it was, it was all said and done.

So I think it's more of it-- I don't believe that he announced it, you know, before people were arrested.

I don't think that, that, that that's what occurred.

I think what happened is, is, and what I think we see across the board a bit too much, in my opinion, is that these are announced a bit too quickly prior to the indictments being done.

Because really what happens is, in the federal government, when folks are arrested, they actually do not tend to reveal their names until the indictment is out, and that's-- we've been seeing a lot of the- these announcements without who has been arrested, and that's because the indictments aren't complete, and I think that's where that mix-up came into play.

Yeah

... that it's not a yes or a no.

You know, I think the thing is, these are most likely, again, I don't know for certain, but most likely commercial off-the-shelf drones, right? So COTS drones.

And I can't help but think that a couple of guys who crossed the border illegally go buy quadcopters and attach five pounds of explosives to them, and we don't have the most predictable event in the world when they fly them into a July 4th parade.

I really appreciate you bringing this up for discussion because I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall talking about the threats that drones really do serve.

And I think my biggest fear is that the people are already here.

The people are already sympathizing with Iran and their cause.

We have arrested many people, as you know.

on this particular issue.

And I think it is so easy to get your hands on these.

How do you prevent something like this?

Just from my knowledge and brief time I spent with folks from the agency, My guess is, is that he made up some source that he had in some foreign country that he paid with gold bars and he would go to the cashier's office and have the right forms to say, I need gold bars to take to my source.

You're actually, it's very apparent that you have spent time with individuals who work with the agency, Leland, because that's exactly most likely what he had said he was using them for.

And the reality is, is you don't just go there and say you want them.

There are forms that need to be filled out.

I can't go through the whole process, obviously, but there's forms that need to be filled out.

There's reasons that need to be made.

There's other people that need to verify those sources.

If somebody came with a movie script and said, this is our guy, I'm not sure we would believe it.

H- How does, how does one get that far lying that much?

Yeah, I think that's what we were the most surprised about, really the charge against him, at least right now.

The FBI did say that they're investigating more, and I suspect, I'm just hypothesizing, that they will add more charges, obviously.

But right now it's just theft of public funds, which is essentially him embellishing his resume, and as a result of that embellishment, he was receiving promotion.

So, you know, at the CIA, if you get a master's degree, then you might get a bump in pay, right? If you get a PhD, you might get a bump in pay, and because of those things that he was putting on his resume, um, he was getting more pay.

And what's crazy is when I think about my initial offer of employment, it was actually conditional upon me graduating college.

People came to my college to check me out, to check my university out.

[laughs]

What do we know about this, and, and what's the, what's the m- what's the madness or the method behind Iran's social media, um, ec- uh, exploits?

So this is actually not new.

I wanna be sure, you know, I put that out there.

This is not new.

Iran and Russia are sort of the two largest influencer perpetrators of trying to create these different narratives, whether they're doing that through social media, whether they're doing that through whatever legitimate news services.

That's what they're doing, and they sort of create these animated videos, right? Or I guess, like you said, Lego style.

They're AI, obviously.

... their goal.

How does an agency like the Pima County Sheriff's Department, even with the help of the FBI, even begin to go through 18,000 tips?

I mean, that's the problem, right? They have to treat every single one of them like it is real.

They are not allowed to just sort of, I guess, Brush it off if that makes any sense.

It's just not something that they can do.

So they're going to go through and start triaging tips from some that are more specific to more general.

And then the ones that seem to be more specific and have more actionable items, those are the ones that they'll follow up with first.

But then they're going to just continue to go down their list.

But if she's an 84-year-old woman, she's living alone, is there something else that you would instruct your 84-year-old mom to do?

When you see that last video, do you think in your expertise that there was some hidden communication?

Yes.

I mean, I think that, first of all, Savannah Guthrie is reading, you know, from it looks like a paper that's on the floor.

But in every video that they have made, they have read with a paper.

There is no question in my mind that the FBI is helping them, I guess, craft these videos and carefully process.

word them.

And I think they are wording them to address whatever is being alluded to in these ransom notes.

Sure.

And then I want to hear your – if you can share your personal opinions as well as why you think Trump and other countries as well have not gone in to save the innocent Iranians.

Sure.

Yeah, so this started – I mean, people think it just started a few weeks ago.

But the reality is, is I think Iranians in general, I don't want to say all, but in general, have not been happy with this regime for quite some time.

Right.

They've ruled them with an iron fist for quite some time.

I would say recently the rial, which is the Iranian currency, has fallen to be worthless, essentially.

Can you talk about the people on the ground in Iran, what they're doing and why and what they're facing with this regime?

in my office like everything you know then they landed the planes uh my parents were stuck in like europe they were in europe they were stuck there for like a week um so what you know what was the you know what were the marching orders after that

Yeah, it was, it's really hard because obviously now I have time to process it, but Congress came down really hard on us, right? Like we were blamed for September 11th and that's a really big load to like carry, right? Like for the rest of your life.

And I think, but at the time, No one cared how you felt about it, which is fine because we needed to get to work.

But I think it all impacted us, obviously, at that time.

So for me, my marching orders are really different than everyone else's.

About a week and a half before September 11th, and I have to talk around this.

It's in my book, but they won't clear the whole thing.

What did you do there?