First Response with Bob Plaschke, Episode 28: Rajiv Maan, Expert in Threat Mitigation, Counterintelligence, Cyber Security, National Security Strategy & Policy

Most people judge counterterrorism by what they see on TV: explosions, raids, and last-second saves. The truth is almost the opposite and that’s what makes it so hard to appreciate. When the FBI gets it right, nothing happens, and the public may never learn what was stopped or how close it came. 

We sit down with Rajiv Maan, a retired FBI leader with more than 20 years in the Bureau and 31 years in law enforcement, to talk about how prevention actually works. He explains how counterterrorism investigations balance evidence, timing, and risk, and why Joint Terrorism Task Forces matter so much when the stakes are mass casualties. We also get personal about the mission-driven mindset it takes to run toward danger, the pressure of never wanting to fail, and the professionalism that comes from training built on research, constitutional law, and repeatable tactics rather than heroics. 

Maan also walks us through major chapters of his career: the post 9-11 shift that brought him into the FBI, the reality of working state-sponsored terrorism, and what overseas assignments really look like when you’re operating openly through an embassy and coordinating with partner services. Finally, we dig into hostage recovery and the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, an interagency effort that pulls together intelligence, defense, diplomacy, negotiation, and family support to bring Americans home and pursue justice when possible. 

If you value clear-eyed conversations about public safety, national security, and the people doing the work in anonymity, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. 

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Transcript

First Response Podcast Transcript

Bob Plaschke with Rajiv Mann

Well, hello. My name is Bob Plaschke, and this is First Response. So the front line, the front line of policing is loud and dangerous, but the voices behind the front lines, they're more important. First Response, we're the number one podcast that takes you behind the badge and uncovers or tries to uncover the real stories and experiences of first responders from all walks of life and topics shaping public safety today. Hopefully you're curious, like I am, about the people that are these heroes that work in the background and keep us safe and the challenges that they face, both personally and kind of at a structural level. So this is your front row seat, and I'm excited to have you join us. The podcast, First Response, is sponsored by PepperBall, where I have the honor to serve as the chief executive officer. PepperBall creates non-lethal alternatives to guns that police use to keep themselves and the public they serve safe. Today, guys and gals, this is a super exciting podcast. I am joined by Rajiv Maan, who spent 20 plus years in the FBI and 31 years in law enforcement. Rajiv, who was born in the Fiji Islands and then grew up in a small town in Northern California, has served a number of roles in cybersecurity and terrorist anti-terrorism groups across the U.S. and across the world, with a posting in Jordan and most recently in Israel. Such a fascinating individual, and I'm super excited to get started with this one. So Rajiv, the first question is I've been watching Homeland on Netflix. I've been on all my flights, and I'm a big my wife's a big fan of I think it's called FBI. How much of what we see on on TV is the truth or is real, and how much of it is Hollywood?

So some of the plots are can be real or close. But the reality is like we're very methodical. The whole goal is not to blow up things and kill get people killed in the process. The whole goal is to stop the event before it starts. So there's a lot of plots that were stopped that we'll probably never know about because the that's a win for us in the counterterrorism world. Where if the event happens, things explode, people die. That is a catastrophic failure for us. So plots, yes, the action and some of those things similar but possibly true, right? But not the explosions and things like that.

Well, to your point, the success for you is that is nothing happens, right? That which is it's funny, it's completely the opposite of what you would what we see or talk about on this kind of a local you know U.S. day-to-day patrol, right? Where they're actually sent out to deal with something that is happening, where your entire focus is to prevent it from ever happening.

That's correct. In the counterterrorism world, the prevention is the it was the biggest thing, right? If you think if you think about it, back in 9/11, where the event did happen, thousands of people perished. And that is a catastrophic failure. For us, when I was working in counterterrorism, was we will we will try to stop a hundred percent of these things before they happen. So there's an investigation going on. As soon as we get enough evidence against the subject, that's when we that's when we decide at what point do we arrest, right? Is the risk too high? Or can we just can we maintain the risk and let it play out a little bit longer before we make that arrest?

You know, I think about what you do and the number of what you and your counterparts in the FBI do, it must be a little bit scary as a citizen to think about the number of incidents that you prevented. They must be in the hundreds. I mean, there must be and never reported. So no one ever really knows that level of that danger was there.

You know, that's correct. I mean, if you think about it, we've we are 25 years away from 9/11. So a lot has happened between now and going all the way back. And some of the threats are th stopped overseas. We work with overseas partners. There's the U.S. military was robust overseas, and some of the times stopped these threats from coming in to the U.S. The whole idea was not for it to happen here. Then somewhere along the line it changed to homegrown inspired terrorists.

And again, once we learn of it, we will ramp up resources and work on that problem set until we can get a good mitigation strategy and mitigate it before it's carried out the type of person you're dealing with is very different, and the type of organizations that you're dealing with are very different than what a normal police officer will see in the United States. It's you know, someone who's addicted or someone who is mentally challenged, or you know, a couple going through you know a domestic dispute. They're very what I would call you know, someone breaking and entering. You know, they're they are kind of criminal acts, or at least they're threats to the public, but they're very isolated. Your audience, your group of folks is much more, I guess, sophisticated, much more, or is that is am I am I just making that up?

No, much more lethal, I would say, right? The outcome of any terrorism attack is to kill as many people as they can. Whereas drug user or domestic violence is between two people, not that it's any less serious, but the idea is not to eliminate as many people as you can. For us, the risk is much higher, right? You have an individual that is either based on ideology or a warped ideology wants to kill American citizens, and people that are here to get a message across.

How how do you deal with that personally? You've gone through decades of seeing people, you know, to your point, who are very intentional, very and intentional on causing significant fatalities. Is that must be mentally challenging, I would imagine, over time to see that part of the world and to see it so persistent.

I look at it slightly differently. This is my home. This is you know, the while we are the federal, we still live in cities and states and those things. And we're looking to we're looking at the bigger picture. We're looking at protecting the United States and the way of life of our country and our constitution. So it's it's a big responsibility to protect that. And if an event doesn't happen, right, there's not mass casualties, there's not much of those happening. It's it's not as bad as where a homicidal k killer goes in and does a mass shooting.

Right.

Right. So the it's it the best way to describe it is it's your patriotism, it's your love of the country, love with the people that get you excited every day to make sure you don't fail.

Right.

And it's personal for me and my team. We would go in and we would have that mindset of nothing, if we fail, right, people will die. And that nothing is gonna get past us.

It's an awesome amount of responsibility that you take. And again, I go back to my homeland experience where they, you know, unfortunately in that case, in that particular show, there's a lot of you know, unplots that aren't solved. And you see the burden, you know, because that because you go in day to day to your point of not failing, because failure is you know can be catastrophic. Is how do you man how did you manage your, I mean, I love the I mean, obviously love the mission and appreciate the mission, and you I guess there's an adrenaline rush from that, and it's very positive when you're successful. How do you help your team manage through the you know what I would call the stress of the you know of that performance or the potential, you know, the lack of the pot the possibility of failure?

So I mean the good part is we have a large team, right? We have a lot of different experts that come in come into our team. So if you look at our JTTF, it's not just FBI, there's there's sheriffs, police officers, or there's SWAT on both sides. Everybody has a piece to play in there, right? Then you have the case agents and the obviously the attorneys are U.S. attorneys. And it is it's an interesting dynamic that takes place. It's a co it's a good coalescing of people moving towards a direction. So it's not one person who bears the burden. My job is my final job as a special agent in charge was to look at risk. Are we doing enough to mitigate the risk, right? And so does the assistant special agent in charge's job is or her job is to look at the program. It's a supervisor who's more of a tactician who looks at all all the problem sets to make sure the agents are agents or the task force officers are engaged into it 100%, right? So it is a lot of stress. So I've been there, I've been in every role. It is a lot of stress. And you don't think about it. I mean, my 20 plus years in the FBI went quickly. I don't know where it went. It fit feels like yesterday I was doing all of this.

Well, I mean, every day, you know, this is the I one of the best examples of our taxpayer dollars at work, right? The that every day you're going in with a mission to protect the United States, to protect the citizens from these types of attacks, which we know, you know, the threat exists. We as citizens and we live and go to bed every night without you know thinking about it, where you wake up every day with a mission to prevent it. It's it's an incredibly noble and an incredibly what you know, it's a great thing to your point to do to wake up and to go to go get it. So I assume you must have enjoyed that. That must be the one of the things you loved about the job.

It is. This job is a calling. When you it feels like a calling. For me, if you look at my background, I was I wanted to be a banker. I'm an immigrant here. And the reality was you know, we went from middle class to poorer class, and my whole goal was to pop back out of that, right? And what what what major would bring me out of that? And my thought was banking, until my until my neighbor took me for a ride-along. And I say this, right? The universe or God, however you want to refer to this, does speak. When I went in a ride along, my I found my calling. I couldn't get it out of my mind, I couldn't shake it out of my mind. It was for me. Now, this work is not for everyone, right? It is not for everyone. You have to run towards danger, not away from it. So same thing as a police officer, same thing as a firefighter, same thing as a soldier. You're running towards danger. For some of us, it excites us, right? We want to we want to handle that situation.

Right.

Some people, some people, you know, it doesn't excite them, right? It's not a thing for them. Their calling is something else. It's not wrong or right, it's just it's something else. Just different. Yep. Yeah, it is different. For me, the FBI was a great adventure, it was a great calling. And I enjoyed going to work every day. I'm sure I had bad days. I don't remember any, but I'm sure I've had them.

Yeah, what a wonderful way to look back at your career. Now, I it if I'm right, you started off as a police officer and then you applied to join the FBI. Is that how you do it?

Yeah, so so I became a police officer in Niba City. And then I applied for the FBI and California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. This was in 1999. At that point, the F the FBI has themes of what they're looking for. They know exactly what they're short on and how to how to grid those personnel. That time at that point, they were looking for people that spoke foreign languages. I speak two other ones. But I didn't want to, I did not want to come underneath that program. Okay. And hard sciences. I have a business degree. So while my well, well, I took the first, it's called phase one. I took the first phase phase one, and past that, they put my application on pause because they were looking for speakers of foreign language and or science. So I went I went with the California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. Okay. Right so and I remember this day is like it was yesterday. It was 9/11. I worked till 2 a.m. That morning, 2 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. I got home, I went to sleep. At 9 a.m. I got a call from our partners to turn on the TV and see what's happening in New York. Right. And it was surreal. And I don't know how many hours I slept, but it was it was a few. I got dressed and I went to work. I didn't know what we were gonna do, but I knew I had to go to work. And at that point, shortly after when when the FBI was able to get to get their arms around this, I called my recruiter and I asked her, I said, are you looking are you still looking for hard science as speakers? Or and she says, Well, we're looking for military and police officers. So my she said you'll take a pay cut, which I did. But I was single, it didn't matter to me, right? It really that didn't matter to me. I wanted to join the terrorism fight, and that this is the best way I knew how. So I went through the process, passed the rest of the process, past the bat, past phase two, past the background, and I found myself in the in Quantico in October. I contacted her in March, October of 2002, I was in Quantico.

Is the one of the things that I at least I hear is that the training that the federal agents receive is kind of next to none. It's it's excellent, it's the it's the best of the best. Is did you is that the case when you went through Quantico?

I can say that wholeheartedly. That's that is my third academy. The first few training I received in the police academy at California Department of Justice, they're great. They were real professionalized training, but Quantico is a different level. It's all science-based, it's all research-based. You have schooling in the morning and then shooting or defensive tactics in the afternoon. And if you can imagine you have a group of type A's in a room, and the only thing that separates us is the degrees of type A you are. So there's a lot, there's a lot of doing your things on your own to make yourself better than your people next to you, right? Or in some cases, stay up, stay with them, right? So you're not left you're not left in there. But from our shooting, everything is you know, everything is researched through arrest techniques, to the constitution, constitutional law, everything that is in Quantico is designed for a purpose. And it and it's I think it's the world's finest.

It's interesting when I you're the first, as I'm just glorious that I've gotten when able to convince you to come on, but you're the first federal, the first FBI agent that we've had on the show. And the just I've seen when I've talked to federal agents, their demeanor is incredibly professional. It's succinct, it's it's measured, it's not it's not bombastic, it's not, you know, you're not telling stories. It's very, it's just very by the way, it's very investment banking. Very, very, very polished. So maybe that's the banker side of you that's that comes out. So what was your first posting? What was that like?

So I came back, I was living in Los Angeles and I wanted to come back to Los Angeles. I wanted to work in a big city. And Los Angeles was had become home for me at that point. So I put in for when you go to Quantico, you pick one when I went through, you pick 156 field offices. So LA was number two, number one was New Haven. I thought I'd want to go, I wanted to go to New York to work in the largest field office in the FBI. But my own personal rule was that if I'd have to meet a buddy there, make a buddy there, and then because the pay is so low, we'd have to be roomies. And I wanted to live in in New York City versus the surrounding areas. I didn't know I want to commute. That didn't happen. I had a friend at that time that was in LAPD and he's and he was from the East Coast, and he says, Hey, go to New Haven to have they have a lot of gang activity and I can set you up with some friends there. Okay. Well, that was the thought. Then came winter, and I'm running around the track and the snow's falling. And I thought to myself, what am I doing? I love Los Angeles, I love the warm weather. I don't like cold weather. I can't I can't stand cold weather. And yeah, and so sixth week you get told where you're going. And thank God, LA, I was selected for LA. And so I came here to Los Angeles field office.

And that's what you've lived for, or at least that's where you've you've kind of resided and where you've retired. Now you mentioned well, actually, I'm gonna have two questions. One is you know, tell me the first kind of piece of work you can remember doing in Los Angeles, and then we'll we'll actually just answer that and then we'll talk about you going to even hotter areas of the world.

Yeah, so so I our terrorism. I that's when we were grouping ourselves and then really building up our JTTFs. So you know, at that time there was a lot of leads, a lot of false leads, but it gave you a rhythm, right? You attack this lead as is there is the it's could be the real thing. We did we didn't know if it was, was not, and you get in that rhythm. And so then then I got shifted over to we broke it up with al-Qaeda and everything else, state related state sponsors of terrorism. So I specialize in state sponsored terrorism, right? Iran, Syria.

Oh my goodness.

And did are you allowed to talk about any threats that you were able to stop in in Los Angeles? Or is that I don't know what's what's what's what you're allowed to talk about or not talk about.

Yeah, there was there was a big case where they had arrested a person that was a former officer of the IRGC. There was a bigger plot of just kind of setting up what I can say is setting up a base, not much of a base, but a group here for for their use if ever needed.

Oh my, this is this is homeland. This is this is homeland. Lord. Was that scary, frankly? I mean, it's it's it's exhilarating the sense that you're actually having real impact, but what that you would actually that a foreign entity would try to establish a base in the United States?

Yeah, and I said I say base in a recruit group of individuals, right? Not a physical base itself. Yeah, it was it was exhilarating because it was right after 9/11. And the last thing and the last thing we want is more of it, right? You come in with that I came in with a sense of purpose that I was gonna do what I can to protect this great nation of ours.

Fantastic. And that then led over years and decades to then going to a much hotter spot. I mean, I would imagine if you love the heat than going to Jordan. So tell us about the post in Jordan.

Yeah, so let me let me take you back a little bit one more, right? So I was here as an agent and I promoted to headquarters in in the terrorism section, and that was managing programs throughout the U.S. you're you're the go-between between Department of Justice and our headquarters and just making sure, like and making sure the program is running well. And those were long hours. From there I thought to myself, well, I've been in the city, I've been I've I've worked for the state. Now I'm working federally, it'd be nice to go internationally. And that was one of one of my goals when I came to the FBI was to go overseas. So the so you do it what they call tryout, you go you take two short assignments overseas to see how how you do out there. How do you how do you blend in with the local service with the embassy? You know overseas is not for everyone, yeah. It really isn't. And then are you of value, right? Again, the FBI does things that make sense, right? And that's how they selected personnel. So I did my two tours, I did an Abu Dhabi and Doha, and I came back and I loved being out there, I loved working with the local service, and the Jordan office was open. And I had put in for Jordan and a couple other offices, and it seemed that Jordan was the one because of my special lead in my area terrorism was the most logical choice to put me there. And that was during Arab Spring.

Oh goodness gracious, so a lot of activity in that context.

A lot of activity. So the Jordanians you know, you work you work in the embassy, you work with you work with all the services, and for us, it you know, a lot of it is working with the Jordanians on getting information across, right? Jordanians are a very professional service, and it was it was a lot of hours. So I mean, just to make clear, I'm not operating there. I'm I am a declared FBI person that core that goes between the Jordanian government and the FBI. Or the Jordanian rather Jordanian service and the FBI. And as you know, the terrorists are travelers and they do travel across the world. And so that information exchange has to be there with all the other countries.

So you're you're working with the local authorities to identify potential threats and then identifying if those threats are kind of heading our way, so to speak.

And then that is very correct. I the whole idea was to go overseas and get the optic back into the back to the U.S. What it what is happening out here that may affect the U.S. or if a person may travel to the U.S. and we don't want to miss that.

And that's different than what I can the CIA construct. Did you did do you spend any time with CIA operatives in in those countries or are you not allowed to say?

No, so CIA has a different lane than what we do. They're intelligence collection apparatus, and then they're they're in their different lane. I am looking strictly from a law enforcement perspective back to the U.S. Do I know them? Did we sure, right? We're all in a an area, right? So but did I do something with them on their operations? No, not at all.

And I think it maybe it's kind of church and state. It's better that you guys kind of divide and conquer, and you to your point you stay in your own swim lanes. It's different, different.

Yeah, everything I do is you know, is when you take it to the court, it's discoverable. Right. Everything's recorded, everything's discoverable. They're they're in a different area of what we do. What is done is not the same, same exact thing.

Yeah, you're kind of you know you're on the same big team, but with very different, it's like MBA versus the NHL, so to speak.

Correct. We're looking we're looking from a pr angle of prosecution, right? We're building a case, we're we're trying to prosecute individual or individual or individuals.

You then you've spent part of your time in the in kind of in managing or dealing with hostage situations, and I'd love to hear more about that.

Yeah, correct. So that was that was recent of recent. I was I was selected to be the director of the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell. So when we say a cell, it is an interagency cell. It is administrated by the by the FBI, but it's and it's housed within the FBI for for I guess the lack of a better word is because we're because it's administered by the FBI, so it only makes sense it's within the FBI. But if you if we can imagine there's three parts of the cell, right? So one is the interagency cell, so Department of Defense and everything that comes underneath there, CIA, depart NSA and other agencies, military, and then these are analysts that are there, office of the person from office of the director of national intelligence. And then you have the Department of State repres representatives that are there, okay, and the and the FBI, right? So it's a fusion cell. We are pulling out every information we can from our buckets and putting it together and pushing it up to the general community.

Okay.

The hostage the hostage cell was created in 2014. And if you remember, you know tragically, you had the Beatles where they murdered a few Americans. Yep. Back then the hostage area was new to us, right? And we didn't have an unlike war on terrorism, where all the walls are collapsed and everybody's talking, and the hostage area is very small groups of people who were working it, and information was being, you know, stovepiped, not purposefully, but just the way the system is set up. And we also didn't have a system in place to where we can declassify information and give it to the family. So the families were having a heck of a time trying to get information from the government. Back then, President Obama realized this and asked for the creation of the hostage response group. So you can imagine three parts. One is the National Security Council, the other part of the Department of State, the SPA, the Special Presidential Envoy to Hostage Affairs, and that is Steve Whitkoff right now, right? And then and then the cell itself. So the cells divided into three. One deals with the family. So you have a psychologist. So if a person is held hostage, they come back. We have a psychologist that can try to make them become whole and work in society. We have social workers that can help the family during the process and are the voice of the family. And then the American citizen services that can help the ease of bringing that person back in. We also have a negotiator, negotiator and a few other folks that can help, specifically the victim. Then we have the cell that grabs information, puts it in a format, and sends it to the to the White House, and then the FBI. Anytime American citizen is held abroad as a hostage, we open a case. And that case we will try to bring the person to justice. So one of the members of the Beatles was brought to justice and is convicted here in the United States.

How many hostages are taken, how many people are American citizens are taken hostage outside the United States a year?

I wouldn't even Yeah, that number ebbs and flows. I mean, so there's two categories there's kidnapping, which is different. There's also three categories, rather. Wrongful detention, where the country holds them, they admit they're holding them, right? And that's the State Department issue. That's that's not our issue at all. And then hostage. Hostages are whether a terrorist group or a country holds them without admitting they're holding them. And those numbers have ebb and flow over the years.

But like give me a range, is it 10, 100?

So I mean, no, it's it's not in the hundreds. That number is classified of how many hostages are there, but just keep in mind for the for our purposes, right? Even if they're deceased, we still consider them a hostage until we bring them back to the family.

And you continue to work. I mean, you mentioned the work you did in Israel. You continue to you do that and you don't stop until you can bring the remains back.

That's correct. That's that's correct. Yeah, and in in the group of individuals, and I will say this, right? They're the most that work with are the most inspiring, right? It's it's it's but that job itself is it you know you deal with the family, and you want to you wanna do what you can to help them out as the best you can. But the issue is there's the hostage, there's a hostage takers, and they get a say in this whole in this whole equation. And it's not it's not as easy as one would think. If you think about the Israeli hostage, that issue that took over two years to resolve.

Right.

It's not as it's not something that's that's done that fast. And as time goes by, information becomes less and less and less. So we're we always regardless, we're still looking to the problem set. Yeah, as you know, as soon as new information comes in, we look to see if there's a thread we can pull on and is there a way we can bring this person back.

You know, it's it's inspiring. The you know, there's a lot of negative criticism about the gut the U.S. government. Maybe some justified, who knows? But when you think about how your tax dollars are used to do these kinds of things when Americans are really in need, right? This is the you know, it is the ultimate, not it's the ultimate way to respond and to take care of your own citizens. I think it's it's I mean, that's truly inspiring, the amount of resources dedicated for this most worst of worst situations.

That's true. And there are also NGOs, right? I don't want to say that the NGOs don't help. NGOs do help us. They what we can provide to the victim families is there's a it's there's a limit. And some NGOs come in and they do like a blanket coverage, right? They will help, they will help them with what we can't help them with. So there is there is that partnership. When I was there, we rekindle those relationships with the NGOs to make sure the victim family is getting the getting as much as they can assistance because I mean put ourselves in the put ourselves in that situation. Somebody we love has been captured overseas, right? And it and then you get you get thousands of phone calls, people have seen them. People are they're calling in and they're they're not actual, they're not real players in the whole game and giving you false information. It's just a terrible, it's it's a terrible time for that person.

Well, you've seen, I mean, Savannah Guthrie and what her and her family have gone through with her mother is you know a perfect example of that in the in a in a U.S. context, right? Just to see that anguish. And it so what a you know thank you for for what you do and what you've done. I have sadly, we're I could be here for an hour. I don't want to monopolize the rest of your day. I've got two questions. The second to the last question is if you're talking to you know someone who'd never dealt with the FBI, what would be the one thing, the one misconception that you'd like to straighten out? And then what would be the one thing that you would you'd like to reinforce? You know, something that they may think that you'd like to say, yeah, that actually is true.

So at least in the movies, my wife pointed this out, they always make us look rude. And arrogant, right? You know, like we're not. We're here to help. We care about the country. And when you're dealing with the FBI, you know, it's just like dealing with law enforcement, you know, what you put in is what you get out, right? They're they're there to help you, they're professionals. I can't say enough about the Bureau. I think it's it was a great organization. It's a very sad day when I left. I'm still sad at some some days, but they're they're there to help. The part I want to reinforce is, and I've always said this when I said this in my retirement, I got to run with some amazing people to be part of that amazing group that I never thought I would get to run with. There's some amazing talent in there that just they couldn't they can make a lot of money on the outside world doing anything they wanted to, but they're doing this because of the love of the country and love of the mission, right? There's some great people in there, and I would like to reinforce reemphasize that. Just I was talking about the my HRFC group when when I left, I felt like I left my family. I still do. I think of all the hours we spent together and the people that were there that are dedicated. If you get to know me, I show up anywhere between to work 545 to 6:30. There were times where they were polite enough to beat me in, to open the door, make sure everything's working, and with a cup of coffee, right? And just just great, great patriot Americans, right? There's great patriots that they care about the country, they care about the people. And you don't see that because we're isolated from unlike police departments where you're interacting with the public every day, they can see that. We're not. We're we're looking at the bigger picture.

Yeah, no, there's hundreds of thousands of these folks, millions of, you know, you think about Navy SEALs, or you think about SEAL teams, or you think about the CIA, or you think about the U.S. Marshals, they're all toil as they should, you know, as they want to do, toil in anonymity, but they're to your point, they're the best of the best. And they're absolutely the highest mission-driven folks I've ever met. Well, I'm sad to say this is the last question, Rajiv. We try to make a small donation in your honor to a charity of your choice for taking the time to share your thoughts and your perspectives with us. What charity can we make a donation for?

Look, my favorite charity is Wounded Warrior Project. We ask these folks to go everywhere in the world without question, right? And they come back sometimes not at whole. And to me, they're my they're my heroes, right? My sacrifices, I think, are nowhere close to what they've sacrificed.

Well, we'll be you'd be honored to do that. Folks, this has been so inspiring, so fascinating. I'm gonna probably ask Rajiv to come back and do section two of this. He is I just it's it's you know, it's why you're proud to be an American. It's why you're you're happy to pay your taxes because the money goes to training, to recruiting, to equipping, to making sure these people can do and they're there in a way that we never know. You know, they're they're defusing things before they happen. They're keeping us safe in a way that we can never understand. And they do it without, you know, without they're not on social media, they're not kind of singing their praises, they're not beating their chest on YouTube. They're doing this for the love of country and the love and for the mission and for the to defend the constitution. It's such a wasn't such a privilege to talk to Rajiv. It's I just I'm I'm on a high. So I must end though, and I must, as I always try to say, is I'm very excited to have to have done this episode of First Response. We are the number one podcast in talking about the people behind the service, behind the FBI and the state and local police and all of the folks that we that keep us safe every day. I am privileged to do that, and I'm privileged and I and I am privileged by and supported by PepperBall, the company where I have the privilege to be the chief executive officer. And again, we make non-lethal tools that police officers use so they don't have to use guns. And they use them instead of their guns to keep themselves and their public safe. So until next time, thank you so much for listening and be safe out there.