The Defuse Podcast: Where Experts Defuse Real Threats
🔊 The Defuse Podcast: Personal Threat Management for High-Risk Lives
When the threats are real, the stakes are high — so what actually works?"
Hosted by Philip Grindell — former Scotland Yard detective, behavioural threat specialist, and author of Personal Threat Management — this podcast lifts the lid on the proven methods used to keep prominent individuals, executives, and private clients safer.
Each episode features straight-talking conversations with trusted experts on:
Stalking, fixated individuals, and insider threats
Protective intelligence and behavioural profiling
Reputation management and media exposure
Doxxing, OSINT, and digital vulnerability
Crisis leadership and executive resilience under pressure
Whether you're in security, lead a family office, or are responsible for protecting people at risk, you'll get honest, practical insights into what actually works when lives and reputations are on the line.
No theory. No fluff. Just proven ways to defuse real threats.
Subscribe now and learn how to manage threats before they become crises.
The Defuse Podcast: Where Experts Defuse Real Threats
The Attack Cycle with James Hamilton Part 2
In this compelling two-part episode, Philip Grindell welcomes back security expert James Hamilton to explore the "attack cycle" - a proven model used by criminals, terrorists, and assassins to target victims. Following the high-profile New York CEO assassination, Hamilton breaks down the eight critical phases: target selection, surveillance, final target selection, planning, rehearsal, execution, escape, and exploitation.
The discussion reveals how attackers methodically progress through each stage and, crucially, how executive protection teams can identify and disrupt these phases. Hamilton shares practical insights on surveillance detection, threat assessment, and creating flexible security programs that balance protection with client accessibility.
BIO
James is a nationally recognized personal security expert and former FBI Supervisory Special Agent. For more than 33 years, he has been a protector, trainer, and advisor to the nation’s most at-risk individuals. He has real, practical, and unparalleled experience in executive protection, violence prevention, and personal security. This real experience was earned through service in local law enforcement, the FBI, and America’s premiere executive protection firm. He has protected government officials, high-net-worth individuals, and leading religious figures all over the globe and has empowered thousands of individuals to stay safe in an increasingly dangerous world. He has dedicated his life to this particular area of expertise and is sought after by those seeking practical and sound guidance.
https://www.hamiltonsecuritygroup.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hamilton-752894104/
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Subscribe to 'Defuse News', our weekly update of the week's events on our website.
Follow me on X /Twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Welcome to the Diffuse podcast with host Philip Grindell, CEO and founder of Diffuse, a global threat and intelligence consultancy that blends psychology and intelligence to mitigate threats and risks to prominent people and brands two or episode four, depending how you look at it with, uh, with james hamilton.
Speaker 2:James is, for those of you who don't know him is something of an expert around the world of ep. Um, his background is he was a former instructor with the fbi and a huge amount of experience there, then moved into working with gavin de becker for a long time and was a very senior figure there and had a real impact on a lot of the training they were doing and a lot of the kind of expertise that they developed. But, james, you've gone out on your own now and how's that going for you?
Speaker 3:It's going good, thank you. It's always. It's interesting. You don't know what's coming down the road. It's sometimes scary, but quite rewarding. Yeah, I'm happy to be doing it, thank you.
Speaker 2:So we're going to make sure that the details of James's consultancy out in the US is referenced at the end of this podcast and also on the notes etc. So if anyone wants to get in touch with James, do so. We'll give all the details for that so that those people who want to get in touch with him can get in touch with him. Now, if you missed the first episode, what we talked about was assassinations in broad terms, but we looked specifically at the attack on the CEO in New York and we touched on and introduced some of the reasons why they get attacked, some of the methods, how they get attacked and how a good EP team would manage that. But then we touched on this concept called the attack cycle, which is a cycle that, or a model I should say, that James talked about and has been practicing for decades. Actually this episode we're going to dig a bit deeper into it so we can really kind of understand the various phases.
Speaker 2:So let's start with so effectively, it's eight separate steps within the model. So the first step is target selection. So let's talk a bit about that, because my experience of that is this concept which you and I have talked about around target dispersal. Experience of that is this concept which you and I've talked about around target dispersal. So they don't necessarily always kind of lock onto a target and off we go. Sometimes they're looking at different targets. So can you just kind of talk about the subjects around target selection and why they would choose one person rather than another? Potentially?
Speaker 3:Yeah, usually if you read like I don't know what slide I use for that, but like on my slides and the FBI slide, it would say general. So the very first step, target selection, is general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they'll say something like OK, you got a group, maybe a criminal group, maybe a terrorist group, maybe just a couple of guys, and, like you know, I'm really sick of. Ok health care, that's a good example. Health care CEO, I want to hurt one. That's a very general target list, right? So then the next step in the cycle is, you know, surveillance. But that's what happens. Is they? They want, they have an axe to grind, it's whatever. I did a lot of study with the Red Army faction in Germany back in the day, you know, and that's what they would do. They're like OK, I want to get somebody that represents Germany, right, alfred Herrhausen, okay, boom.
Speaker 2:Then they started going they started going through that attack cycle. So the general bit is a kind of concept around. What broad topic am I going to take?
Speaker 3:on effectively Politician, mp, celebrity singer, you know anything like that? Former president, you know just kind of this general group of folks that do this thing that maybe I'm pissed off about, tech CEOs, or you know whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And you know, you know, sometimes with the stalker type world where they part of their motivation is infamy, I want to be kind of connected. Is that something that comes into this, or is it a completely different concept?
Speaker 3:Well, I think no, I think they just quickly go from one to three, right. So they're kind of initially enamored by maybe a couple of celebrities and then all of a sudden it's Jennifer Anderson by God, I'm not going to change my mind, right. And now they're down. They're progressing down the cycle and sometimes they stop. You know, sometimes they can't get to the rest of it, but you know, that's kind of how it happens. I think that I wrote something about the pennsylvania attack with the governor and that's what. That guy went real quick through the cycle like boom. But a lot of times, you see, it takes years, especially like terrorist groups like al-qaeda. You know they used to plan for years, so it really depends. But um, that's kind of how it starts, it's just very general, you know. And then they launch into step two so so.
Speaker 2:So if you take al-qaeda as an example sorry to interrupt with them, but if you look at 9-11, so the target would have been america, effectively, or the west, potentially financial, american financial, okay, and then, and then they started doing all their surveillance, which is the next phase, and then they've kind of narrowed it down to what we're going to do in the Twin Towers.
Speaker 3:Yep, okay, and we know for a fact. I mean, we're talking years of surveillance that was done in New York City by them, years.
Speaker 2:So that's the next phase, this surveillance phase. So when I think about surveillance, I often picture in my mind watching somebody or following somebody, et cetera. But are you talking much broader than that in terms of surveillance?
Speaker 3:I think it depends on the adversary. I think if you're talking nation state, a very well-financed terrorist group, criminal group, then they're going to be doing not just physical surveillance out there looking at somebody, as you described, but technical. They're going to do some type of exploitation online. They're going to be all over the computer. It just depends on how much capability they have. But at the rawest level it was just a guy goes out and he looks and does physical surveillance of that target to see, well, can I even get in there? And that's what the guy in Pennsylvania did. He's like yeah, there's a mansion, there's a black, dark spot, I'm going over the fence. And that's exactly what he did. Just like that, you know. But you know I that.
Speaker 3:Step two, I always tell people I train it's super important, you know to look for what surveillance looks like, right, because I need to teach them what that looks like. And then we got to have a plan when we see it. And what we can't do is create an alibi and say, oh, it's nothing, oh, it's just. You know, we make a story. Don't do that. Make it difficult for them, right? Call the police, knock on their window, send a nosy neighbor, do whatever you got to do to make it uncomfortable for them, so that what they do is they say, oh hell with this, it's too hard, it's too difficult. I'm going to move on to somebody else on that general target list from step one.
Speaker 2:So is this a bit like you're doing your protection work, or you're doing what you're doing and your intuition picks out someone? Yeah, and then what you do is talk yourself out of the intuition by making up a reason why that person's there?
Speaker 3:Or maybe it's not even intuitively. Maybe you're in the house and you are the security center of the residential estate and you see on a camera a car sitting right outside the house and it's been there for an hour. Well, that's not intuition, that's just observation. And then what happens is, instead of saying hey, that's probably surveillance, you say, oh, it's probably nothing, because I want to go back to watching the Netflix show or what the hell I'm doing. Right, and what I want people to do is go, wait a minute. You are a protector at a protected person's home because there must be some concern for their safety. And now you've got a vehicle outside the home doing what you think is surveillance. Well, why wouldn't it be surveillance? Let's investigate further. No-transcript, you better get it, because when you have that car showing up at that home and at that office, you got yourself a big problem on your hands.
Speaker 2:So that's about identifying, noticing, seeing something and, rather than making up a reason why it's there, go and investigate.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and you're getting twofold on that. The reason we investigate is we make it uncomfortable, so they don't like being here, and second, we might get information. And when I say might, I don't know how it works in the UK, but if I call the police, I'm a private Joe Schmidt citizen. I call the police about a suspicious person. Maybe the police will tell me hey, we met with him, this is his name. Maybe they won't. It just depends on the jurisdiction. But um, if they give you a name, man, yeah great, I've got a car, I got a license plate number and I got a name and if you're wrong, you're wrong.
Speaker 3:Big deal, move on I don't give a shit, yeah, I don't care. So what? What are you doing out there? You know, like, don't do that, I don't care. What are you gonna arrest me? But man, I, I, uh, that's what we're looking for, because that's what they're doing Now. There's a lot you can get off Google, there's a lot you can do from the keyboard and there's things we can do on the other side to obfuscate that, clear it, blur it, really hide property addresses, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, they are eventually going to come out and when they come out from their keyboard and they start looking around, you got to be positioned, you know, kind of mentally, to okay, that's what that is.
Speaker 2:Let's do something versus you know, it's probably nothing, sir, and I guess if you're looking at ceos particularly we're talking about executive protection particularly they're going to know where they work oh yeah so they've always got a start point yeah, the the hard ones are.
Speaker 3:You know, when the ceo's got one home and one office, that's the hard one, because there's no like uh, okay, if the ceo's got nine houses and he works remotely, man, that's great right, because it's hard now to target it.
Speaker 2:We're removing that predictability.
Speaker 3:Predictability, yeah I don't know which which house is he in. He could be on that yacht over there. It's hard to attack a yacht. It looks good on TV but it's really hard to do. So, yeah, that's a little bit better because you've got multiple houses. I can move you around. But if you're only in one spot and you go to a known office every day that everyone knows that office is linked to you, okay, we're going to have to increase the protective strategy around you because it's very predictable.
Speaker 2:So if we move on then to the next phase, this final target selection, what's happening here then?
Speaker 3:So they've been able to look at okay, this general list, and then someone on that general list, usually based on soft target. They don't have any security. They leave the same time every day, drive the same car. They don't look around, no EP, no vigilance. Yeah boom. Unless there's something going on with them where they're just obsessed with one name, they'll move to okay, that is the easiest target. He meets the number one criteria of tech billionaire. Let's say Now I'm going to three, that's an easy target, okay, okay, tech billionaire. Let's say Now I'm going to three, that's an easy target. Okay, final target selection. That's our guy.
Speaker 2:And that can be. They might have EP, but it might be not very good. It might be poor, they might be lazy, might be switched off drinking coffee, having a paper, whatever.
Speaker 3:A million percent. They could be sleeping All of it. And if for some reason you have risen to, okay, you're, you look easy to me, I'm going for it. Um, or you know, like golly, you look at her hair housing. You know, they just want to. They really wanted him.
Speaker 3:That was a hard target, you know, and they, you know for your listeners who aren't familiar, I mean, if you haven't been training that, call me, because it's one of the most fascinating attacks ever. But that was a hard target. But but they wanted that guy and so they got him. Who are you talking about? Sorry, just remind me. Who are we talking about here?
Speaker 3:Alfred Herrhausen. He was a Deutsche Bank chair in 89 in Germany and he got killed. He got blown up while being protected. He was in an armored vehicle, but they wanted him. And so you know, that's an example of Okay, even though he was a hard target, he got boom, he got number three final target selection. We're coming because what I said earlier, what's the adversary's capability? And that group, that Red Army faction, bon Monhoeffer gang, very good at what they were doing, which was kidnapping and killing, and they had a lot of expertise, not just small arms, but explosives, other things. So that's what they went for it and you know, um, but usually you know we all want to be successful and you're going to pick a softer target than someone that's very difficult to get to yeah, okay, so then we move on to planning.
Speaker 3:Yep what's the goal?
Speaker 3:And then, so that there it is, what are we going to do? Or, from the adversarial standpoint, what do we want to do? Do we want to kidnap, kill, embarrass? Um, you know those are probably the three main ones, um, but if it is, you know, I always tell my, my audiences it's the kidnapping is harder than the killing. Okay, we have all kinds of examples in the ep world of a person being attempted to kidnap and they end up, you know, botching it and the guy dies. So it's a lot harder to do. But, uh, let's say you know, okay.
Speaker 3:So, final target selection we've identified him. Now the plan is okay. What do we want to do? We want to kill it. Okay, look how, probably in transit. Why? Well, because we can see all the security. Okay, where, right? And it's the three attacks. Like you know, criteria, control, comfort. Like you know, criteria control, cover, conceal and escape. You know we're going to look for a place along the route. If they don't vary their routes, where does that support our ambush or what we want to do? That's kind of how they do it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that and again, that phase can take hours or years, depending on the circumstance.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's usually done by the heavy hitters. You usually have guys with some capability who are doing that, because they're the ones who are probably going to be doing the operation and so it might be less time. Why? Because you don't want to send somebody out for months doing the initial surveillance and they might get arrested, rolled up, caught, captured. So those are kind of throwaway folks. But these guys doing this final planning, they're your operators.
Speaker 2:They're the guys who are probably going to pull the trigger or press the button In the New York assassination. He talked in his I can't remember if it was his manifesto or his interview or whatever but he talked about simple social engineering. Yeah, I mean he seemed to go through this phase quite rapidly. Do we know how much planning he did?
Speaker 3:No, I mean, I can only say by what I read in that manifesto is that he knew the time and place of where his target was going to be. He acquired a weapon through printing one and then he found access, so it worked very quickly through the cycle.
Speaker 2:Do we know whether he knew that he had no security?
Speaker 3:I think he probably figured that out. My understanding was he was in the city for several days and I think he probably just watched that hotel, saw his target leaving without security. He's like, yeah, and I always tell people this too, I mean, even if he had had security, maybe our guy just says, hey, they're factored in, I'll shoot them too. You know that's happened, you know they're visible. Security could be factored in if you, especially if you don't think they're any good like, okay, I'll shoot them and then I'll shoot the back, the target. Um, but I think he he did his surveillance, he saw there was nothing and he chose his time and place and he took it okay so let.
Speaker 2:So, let's move on to rehearsals. I think that's a really interesting one which I think people probably don't necessarily understand. People do these rehearsals, these kind of planning, physical planning, effectively.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just, you know, especially if you're doing some type of vehicle assault, you know you will see that a lot, especially with, like you know the good guy, like tactical teams, but bad guys do it too. Cartels do this. It's just okay, let's rehearse. Where are we going to pin this guy in? How are we going to do it? Hey, who's going to block? Who's coming up alongside? Who's got the weapon? They're rehearsing. Okay, how's all that going to work? What speed are we going to do it at? Where's our escape? They do some degree of rehearsal. Uh, you know the professional folks sure, sure.
Speaker 2:The more sophisticated they are, the more they're going to do effectively, right, exactly, and then we're on to execution, which is what it is.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's the, it's the attack that goes in yep, yep, they're, they pre-stage, they put themselves in their you know little position and they wait for you to get there and then they execute, um, and it's on that. Then there's action on the objective. And you know, if you're driving, for instance, on the good guy side, and you see it, you know, for years and years, like in pakistan, the typical attack pattern in pakistan was they would throw a block with a car, a guy would get out in an ak and start to spray you down. Okay, so that they knew that. And you know there's a really good example of a Pakistani, you know, driver saving a U S consulate official because he knew he was like yeah, I know this is what they do. And so in that moment you have a choice you can run through them or you can back out. And he backed right out of it, saved her life. Um, but in that moment at action, when so they're executing their plan, it's happening.
Speaker 3:Action on the objective. You know the good guy, you still have a choice. You're not chopped liver, you don't have to take it, but it's gonna be quick. You know, make a quick decision, go through it, go around it, back up, bail out. You know that those are basically your choices from a car, um, but yeah you, you have some say, but it's gonna be seconds. You know you gotta got to be head on swivel and really have a plan. And if you've never thought about it and you're like, oh crap, and you see the guy throw the block and the gun comes up, you're probably not going to survive. Now, if you have armor, you've got a little bit more time, but no armor, you're probably not going to work out.
Speaker 2:So when you're bringing together a security team to go and protect an EP let's say it's in New York, just for hell's sake, how much time are you then spending training the team together? So I brought you all together. You may have never worked together before we're going to run some drills. I mean, I know you probably do that is. Is that usual, or do we often see just teams being collated and let's crack on?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think a lot of the crack on. I think there's a lot of implied uh acceptance, meaning, oh, I know what to do on a vehicle rival, or I know what to do on a gunshot, or you know, that's a. That's an assumption that I don't like to make. The only way to actually know that is if you've actually trained together and you know what they're going to do because you've done the same training. You can't assume that just because someone is a bodyguard or EP person, that they know exactly what you're going to do or how you're going to react or where to go in an arrival, or where to do they go on a departure or where do they go. At this stage you know, yeah, I like to have. That's why you know, at least from my world. You like to have everyone kind of trained together, same kind of group. I don't like to bring somebody I don't know in game day and say, oh, I hope it works out.
Speaker 3:I used to refer to that in the government as a rattlesnake roundup where you would get like ATF, secret Service, us Marshal, fbi, dea, put them in a raid. Well, they don't train together, right, they're all trained at different locations, some at Glencoe, some at the FBI Academy. Their tactics might be different. There's really just you're using luck as a strategy. You're hoping that they all know what to do after the breach. Well, that's a really dangerous thing to do. In fact, if you look at the Reagan video, that's a good example.
Speaker 3:So you know, we have a really good holistic Secret Service team there Hinckley fires, secret Service deploys, but then afterwards, after they've taken Reagan away, well, the police officers get involved. Well, the police officers don't know the Secret Service agents. There's a lot of like I don't know who you are. There's a lot of you know different types of responses. There's police officers grabbing Secret Service agents who have guns pinning them against the wall. You see a lot of that. Why? Well, because they had never met. So there was an awful lot, especially in the States, of put them all together and it's just going to work out. I don't like that idea. I like to train them all together so they know what to do when they hear that telltale sound.
Speaker 2:And I think this model, I think one of the things I think I've taken from it is the bad guys are going to do planning. So if they're doing it, the good guys should be doing it.
Speaker 3:A million percent. And you know, if you talk to a police officer about this cycle, right besides the well, and I've seen it, but they do the same thing when they do a raid. If you look at a police officer or police operation or FBI, they do the same thing. When they do a raid, they do initial surveillance of the location. Ok, that's the target A little bit of more planning, a little bit of more planning, a little bit more research, a little bit more surveillance. You know, action on. I mean it's the same type of steps. So, yeah, I mean it's a fool's errand to believe the bad guys aren't practicing. You know they are that. I know it sounds good to think they aren't, but you know they are and they're competent also.
Speaker 2:So we need to do the same thing, and then we move on to the escape and exploitation.
Speaker 3:And I think one of the really interesting things about the New York case from an outside perspective, just reading the media and watching the news is how quickly and effectively he was able to escape. Yeah, and think about how long he was gone a while. And same with the Pennsylvania thing they didn't catch him after he threw the Molotov cocktails in the governor mansion's house. He left. It took a while. So, yeah, it's amazing to me that they're able to get away that quickly. A lot of times they think they're going to die or they're willing to die or they actually do die because it's a, you know, suicide bomb, for instance. Um, but yeah, exploitation is important escape and exploitation, you know.
Speaker 2:Look what I did, look what I did, look what I did so the exploitation bit is the after effect in terms of you got the escape, and then they're kind of gloating and and bragging about that yeah, I mean I've read, you know, I've read the bremer diary.
Speaker 3:You know the assassin diary written by arthur bremer. That's gloating. I mean he wrote about how he tried to kill nixon. Then he killed or shot george wallace. That's gloating. John hinkley interviews mark david chapman. I watched his interviews where he killed lennon. That's gloating. That's definitely part of it.
Speaker 2:Now it's interesting because the attacks we've seen in the UK on our British politicians, one of the common denominators was there was almost no escape plan. Some of them just sat down and waited for the police to turn up, so there was almost like a fait accompli. They either expected to get killed or just be arrested. Wow. And so it was an interesting fact when we looked at all the attacks is there was no real escape plan. Um, and they put lots of effort into and planning and preparation.
Speaker 2:Now these guys obviously are not. Uh, the attackers have, none of them have been trained. They're not, they're not an organized group, they're lone actors, every single one of them. Some of them are just fixated individuals. But it was noticeable how there was lots of effort in going into the, you know, getting the proximity and all the research and everything else, but no escape plan. And I think that may be because of the kind of amateur nature of who they were all, their expectations of. I'm just going to die here who they were all their expectations of I'm just going to die here.
Speaker 3:And I'm grateful for those, you know, because they're not thinking, and that's good, and that means they're going to make some mistakes. That's good, you know. It's the ones that are really calculating that are really concerning, because if they have an escape plan, Because didn't Hinckley just sat down, didn't he, and read the book? Well, he got jammed, so he fired and they jammed him against the wall and then they arrested him and took him away. Um yeah, chapman, just sat down chapman sat.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm on the side. Yeah, chapman sat down. Yeah, interesting, interesting, so okay. So so how do we, you know, how do we do? Are you briefing, uh, clients who wants, who want protection on these steps as well, so that they're aware of it? Do they need to know, or how do you manage that?
Speaker 3:They do need to know, but a lot of times their minute rate is like my monthly rate, so you don't get a lot of time with them. It's funny when people say, oh, I need two hours with the CEO. Well, that's not going to happen. You might get 20 minutes if you're lucky. So for me to walk through the attack cycle with them, it's going to take a hell of a longer 20 minutes.
Speaker 3:So I just try to hit the high points elevator, pitch them about access, about threats, about the role of guns and executive protection. And then access and we are going to do everything we can to make you less accessible to people. And we are going to do everything we can to make you less accessible to people. And we're going to be tight when we need to be and we're going to give you a hell of a lot of space when we know they couldn't plan for this and let's see how it goes. And we're going to constantly correct. I always tell them we're kind of dating right now and let me know what you don't like and then let's continue to go down the road. But yeah, you don't get a lot of time with them for sure, what about in terms of the planning phase?
Speaker 2:then? Are you ever, are you ever, briefing them on what to do if we get hit?
Speaker 3:oh, like a covering evac. They usually don't get much briefing on that. They're told you know we're going to remove you away and they usually don't get any say in the matter. Sometimes they'll protest in the moment I've seen that but um, if you're doing it as you should, violently, they don't get it, they don't really get a word. You're grabbing them and you're doing it as you should, violently, they don't get it, they don't really get a word. You're grabbing them and you're moving them and you're getting them to a safe area as fast as you possibly can. But they do kind of understand. You know that's part of it. But again, you just don't get a lot of time with them and I found the first 20 minutes are really about giving them the no BS Like.
Speaker 2:This is how it works, this is what we're doing, and the rest of this theater is just theater, right, like and helping them understand when I say theater, like, okay, that's what I'm talking about, you know so from an ep perspective, then let's talk a little bit about travel security, because presumably things are um simpler when you're in your own environment, when you're flying to Mexico on business or something, or you're flying to certain more hostile environments, potentially that must make things more complicated.
Speaker 3:It does. There's a bunch there, but a couple of factors. One would be it's difficult because you're going to need some help on the ground. You can't just be by yourself doing it on your own, with no support, nothing like that, because you're in a foreign land and you're going to need some local help. So that's a part of it. Then, what are they actually involved in?
Speaker 3:So I was asking where are you going and what are you doing? Because you might be going somewhere that's relatively safe, but you might be involved in activity that's extremely dangerous, right? So I got to understand those two things when are we going and what are we doing? And if your answer is, well, I want to go to something that's very dangerous right now, why Do we need to go now? If the answer is yes, well then we're going to have to put in some more capabilities around you probably armor, probably maybe some type of arm component, maybe a surveillance detection team, something like that.
Speaker 3:And then your notoriety who are you, are you going to be? Is your potential risk? Because you are the CEO of Apple, let's say, or because you just happen to be an American and you're going to an area of the world that doesn't like Americans, or you're just rich and they're going to hack that Rolex off your wrist, like, what type of risk am I? You know? And it could be environmental, it could be a weather thing. You know, I've had clients who are, you know, let's get past all the bullets and crap, but they're going to, you know, hike Everest.
Speaker 3:Ok, well, that's a risk, right, and let's make sure that they don't die from the environmental factors. Yeah, so that's a lot of it. Where are you going? What are you doing? Do you have to go now? And then let's just try to create a protective plan around you to keep you safe and let you do what you want to do. And then sometimes you got to tell them you know, this isn't smart. You know you don't have to go with them. I tell people that too, you know crazy. You don't have to go.
Speaker 2:This isn't you know you're not in the government anymore, it's private sector amen. You can say look this is crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not going to. You know, fallujah.
Speaker 2:Let's say yeah, yeah and and um. What about? What's the importance in your world, then, of kind of briefing and debriefings?
Speaker 3:the team or the client, the team team, oh, wow, yeah, I mean, the brief action on you know is going to be. You know, this is what our concerns are. These are the people that we're looking out for based on, you know, inappropriate pursuit information, threat information, who should be in this area, social media, all that stuff that we're monitoring. Ok, these are the five people and we know they're in the area. Okay, if you see them and they're armed, you know we're going to take the appropriate action. If they produce a weapon and you know violence happens, we're moving the protectee and get them out of there and someone's moving to the bad guy.
Speaker 3:You know, and that's part of the briefing these are your, you know, not really authorities, because on the private side you don't have a lot, but these might be. You know, these are your roles, responsibilities. This is your area of responsibility, this is where you're going to go, what we call protective or projective coverage and then you go to work and then, after the operation, you do a debrief, an aar after action review of, okay, what went right, what went wrong, how can we make it better do you operate in the uk at all?
Speaker 2:have you operated in the uk at all with?
Speaker 3:With the FBI. I have and I did some stuff privately that, yeah, I can't really talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's the difference then, when you're operating in an environment like this, where, in the UK, where I'm speaking from, where you probably don't have firearms, where you probably don't have firearms, so you have a different set of skills you've got to use?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know the UK issue less concern about a firearm attack and more of a concern knife bomb. You know things that have happened in the UK, knife especially, or just you know, vehicle ramming, you know. So we're going to do a walkabout in, you know, on Smith Street down in London or that's what it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, are there bollards? As I'm doing the advance, are there bollards here? So if the boss wants to walk down this alley, are we relatively safe from a vehicle attack? Because we know those happen in Europe. Right, yeah, you look at it differently than, say, in the US, where you know statistically it's going to be a handgun or a rifle. The statistics on that in the US are 71%. So it's 50% of the time with these attacks it's a handgun and 21% of the time it's a rifle. That's from just two seconds.
Speaker 2:But in the UK it's different because there aren't as many guns, not to say it can't happen but yeah, I'm definitely concerned about the other things that I've seen from terrorists in the UK, and then you put that into your planning process. That's quite a different way of doing the job, isn't it? Presumably Because you're, you know, particularly in the private sector, where you might have American clients who are used to having armed protection. Yeah, but they're coming here.
Speaker 3:Now it's still about access and for me me, if you're going to come at me with a knife, well there's, there's some advantages to that you have to get real close unless you're throwing it, so that's good. So I can maybe not let you get so close. But the things that are troublesome are the, the vehicle attacks. So I don't like to do a lot of walking, you know, just walking around aimlessly. I like to go from a car to a venue, back to a car and out, and the boss says, hey, I want to make you know, I want to walk around. Okay, well, let's make sure we do that in an environment where there are bollards or you know.
Speaker 3:You, just on your briefing doc, you tell the team hey, you hear that telltale sign of that engine revving and people screaming. Bail into an adjacent building, store, restaurant, cafe. That's your plan, that's your immediate TTP tactics, techniques, procedures Bail in now and we'll all meet you wherever you want. Type deal. But that's different. I wouldn't probably have a plan like that in the US, even though we had one in New Orleans recently. That's probably not part of my thinking.
Speaker 2:So environment is obviously critical, then, in terms of understanding the environment you're in a million percent.
Speaker 3:I mean no offense, europe's not what it was 20 years ago, you know. I mean there's some things happening in europe now. They're like oh wow, you know, france is different. It's different in france today than it was 20 years ago, you know, and that's just something you got to pay attention to.
Speaker 2:It's happening yeah, so know you've talked about your training. What does your training consist of? When you're doing training now from your consultancy, what are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm doing personal security training for regular folks. I'm doing executive protection, you know, one day seminars, really for teams to help them, you know, do a better job with regards to private sector work. What I mean by that is it's not hard skills, it's not shooting, it's not medical, it's not driving, though I do talk about those things. It's the things I've learned over the last 25 years. How do I buy time for the client? How do I create efficiencies for them? How do I show return on investment? How do I earn trust and confidence? How do I give space and, more importantly, how do I take space? And then how do I explain that to them?
Speaker 3:And I give all the students the why. Right, I don't know about you, but like when I was in the government, I'd go through a training and they'd say, well, that's the way it's always been. But my common sense was like well, that's how it's always been. Well, that's like the worst answer in the world. So I give them the why is to everything that I teach.
Speaker 3:And so when a client asks, hey, why are you insisting on 25 feet at the speech? Oh well, because you know, we know from study that 81% of attacks happen within 25 feet. So if I can just keep people back 25 feet, my chance of success keeping you safe goes up exponentially. Oh, okay, that makes sense to me, right? So I give them that. And so for me I like this seminar that I'm teaching because there's nothing else like it. No one else is teaching those things. They're all teaching the hard stuff, which is great, but I'm teaching the business type stuff. You know how do you make yourself valuable to the CEO, to the company, so they don't fire you at the end of the year. You know that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:And I know you've shared some of that with me and I absolutely. One of the things you taught me was around making sure that every month they get a report, even if they want it or not, so that you can evidence what you're actually doing, so that at the end of the year they're not asking well, hang on a minute, I haven't heard from you all year. They get a report every month and I have to say I listened and took your advice and have done that with my clients and they get a good report, and actually what we're doing now is talking more about how do you want the report the CEO he's really visual or he's really detailed held. We want it to be this way, and so, again, it's about you know evidencing your return, their return, on that investment yeah, the, uh, the, the ep programs.
Speaker 3:I assess most of them and it's not their fault, because there's just no school for it. You know it's all kind of haphazard. Um, I'll ask them you know what kind of reporting are you doing? And you know invariably the answer is well, only if something happens. Well, shit, man, if nothing happens in 365, which it usually doesn't you got nothing to show at the end of the year. And they're going to start counting numbers, your bodies, you know they're going to go. Wait a minute, what do we spend all this money on? But if you can start to show reports, you know things. You're doing, proactive steps you're taking, like I was talking about the red car, like there's real techniques you can do, using technology to assess whether that red car has been at home and at work, and then you can run that report. And then you can use analytics and you can say, yeah, man, that thing showed up on Tuesday June 12th, oh, you've got a problem. Or the report says, no, we've never seen it at the office. That's favorable you know.
Speaker 2:So where can people find you in america then? How can they, how can they get hold of you?
Speaker 3:so I've got a website. It's a hamilton security groupcom. Um, you can call the office. I actually my number is on there. I will pick up that phone. Uh, I will get back to you. I believe in ridiculous responsiveness. I'm on linkedin, instagram. I have a youtube channel, but I haven't done a lot with that lately. Um, yeah, just go on my website, though, and there's a contact form, and just put in what you want to talk about and I will get back to you. A lot of people say, oh, I didn't think you would call me. I'm calling you because I might not be able to help you. Maybe it's just not the right situation, but I'm going to get somebody who can help you. I will get you there right, I'll make you better than I found you brilliant.
Speaker 2:So, listen, make sure we'll make sure that all those details are on the on the show notes, uh, with all the various links. Uh, james, brilliant, as yours, as usual, always informative, always real, because I know that you've actually done all this stuff for real in in some of the most hostile parts of the world um, and I don't necessarily mean america and, and you know, really, really, really interesting, fantastic. Thank you for sharing all that and thank you for your time. Everyone. Just remember, if you're listening, you know, subscribe to the show so that you don't miss episodes like this, because sometimes we don't always advertise who's coming on. It's kind of last minute and it's about their availability as much as anything else. Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter, diffuse News, which you can do on the website, and don't forget to buy a copy of the book Personal Threat Management, which James was very kind and wrote a testimonial in. So thanks again for that and look forward to speaking to everyone again very soon. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Diffuse podcast with host Philip Brindell, CEO and founder of Diffuse. Please rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platforms.
