How does this relate to corporate and family details?

So hopefully you have been wondering about a few things I said, that’s good.  OK enough suspense, how many times have you fired your weapon while protecting someone? Direct and to the point, I like that. This just might be shocking to you, I never fired my weapon while on a PSD Team. So now you’re saying to yourself “you spent 7 ½ years in Iraq and never fired your weapon?”

Well, that’s partially correct, and there are a number of reasons for that, one could be that the escalation of force worked before it reached that level, another could be that I might have been a driver the day there was an incident. Usually the only people who might fire a weapon would be the two rear gunners in the follow vehicle. Notice I said “might,” most times a show of force worked.

I also spent one year on the Counter-Assault/Quick Reaction Force Team, that’s a few stories for another day and yes I fired my weapon a number of times. Running roughly 5-6 missions a day the risk of being attacked was much higher than a PSD team running one a day. There are plenty of people that have worked in Iraq that have never fired their weapons at all in the line of duty.

If you think doing PSD in Iraq or Afghanistan is about firing guns and killing bad guys you have some serious misconceptions about protection. Our job is to run away when attacked, or better yet avoid trouble in the first place. That’s not the overly macho picture you imagined is it? Like I said, there are a lot of misconceptions out there.

Now that we have that out of the way let’s get down to business shall we? So you want to know what the difference between protection in Iraq and a corporate detail is? Take away the car bombs, shootings, and IED’s, the 5-11’s, etc, and it’s only a matter of cosmetics.  Come on Scott, how can that be?  Simple, it’s the same job only the cosmetics are different. We did the same thing you do, advance work, intelligence gathering, route planning, driving/motorcade operations. Obviously we had far greater resources, openly displayed weapons, and tactics were more overt. But when you get down to it the job itself is the same, protection of a principal.

The image you have of us is probably that of someone who only wore tan 5-11 clothing and looked like a band of unruly pirates, somewhat true at times. Remember I told you about those single car movements? When you go visit the President, Interior Minister or other high level officials you don’t show up looking like a bum. Yes, I wore a suit and also had tan slacks and a sport coat. Not the image you had is it? Remember, we dealt with US and foreign government officials on a daily basis, wore suits and actually looked like any other government protection detail, many times the rifles stayed inside the cars.

In the corporate world you will most likely be off on your own doing the advance work for your team. In the PSD world we had a dedicated advance team, you just don’t get in your car and drive around Baghdad to do advance work. Each person was assigned a part of the advance to complete; pictures, floor plan, meeting with the point of contact, and the DDM (Designated Defensive Marksman) was tasked with doing a range card from the roof just in case one of those pesky Al-Qaeda snipers decided to show up. You plan according for possible threats, and snipers are pretty low on the corporate threat list.

Of course the way we each approach doing an advance is different we are still looking for the same end result. You want to know as much as possible about the venue, routes, point of contact, bathrooms, etc. When doing our advance work it was normal for us to meet with the head of security for government ministers. You might even do this on private details, I know of a couple that do this fairly often.

Sure we did things at a more advanced level, access to intelligence for instance. I don’t know of many corporate details that have access to government level intelligence.  As the team intelligence representative I read the intelligence updates at least once a day, usually twice. On a corporate detail you may subscribe to a service, read the news, talk to local law enforcement or even the desk clerk at the hotel you are staying in, you are performing intelligence gathering although it just doesn’t sound as sexy.

Here’s something to consider, has anyone on your team or even your principal been through any hostage awareness and survival training? Due to a serious and verified threat we were given this training from a government agency that has a dedicated group who deals with hostage recovery. This was indeed some of the most interesting training I have taken. Some of the topics covered dealt with what to do as a hostage, and what not to do. Everything from how to interact with your captors to how to leave evidence of you having been in that location so any rescue attempt would have a better chance of success. It also taught us how to escape restraints, lock picking and some other things. How much would you have to spend on outside training for this?

In both EP and high-threat details a majority of your time is spent in or around vehicles. Numerous well known studies have shown that the majority of attacks occur in or around vehicles. I can certainly attest to that being true since the majority of attacks I was involved in were during motorcade operations. Does your team actually get time to train for that? Are they provided with the resources to do that outside of going to Vehicle Dymanics Institute (VDI) every two years? Drive any vehicle in Iraq daily and you can consider it some of the best real life training you’ll ever get and it wasn’t always about dodging roadside bombs either.

One benefit I bet you hadn’t thought of is the ability to remain extremely alert and maintain that for long periods of time. No I’m not talking about staying awake for an entire week. What I’m talking about is the ability to be so aware of your environment that you instantly recognize something that is out of place and react to it without thinking about what you are doing. Sound familiar? It should have been discussed in the EP training you attended. Instant threat assessment on the fly so to speak, we all do it to some degree. Situational Awareness. I’m convinced we avoided a couple of attacks by recognizing the pre-indicators such as someone waving flags on a rooftop and then responding accordingly.

Earlier I mentioned all the fun things about Baghdad like car bombs, complex attacks, etc. Is there actually anyone on your detail that has trained for that, let alone actually experienced them? Does anyone on your detail have any real experience dealing with actual terrorists and their tactics? Do you have a principal evacuation plan? Do you have a down vehicle plan? Do you think it will work in real life? I know mine will, I’ve done it.

What is your plan to deal with a principal that loses control during an attack? I ask because very rarely will they participate in your training, and if they do are you doing evacuation drills with them and is it realistic training? SOP’s are great, but did you spend countless hours making them only to have them collect dust in your office? Too many details I have seen never get time to train because agents are constantly on the run and never afforded time to put in good training as a team.

I hope by now you’re starting to see we really do have a lot more in common than you might have thought and we are not the mercenaries that the media claims. OK Scott, what else? Spending that much time in Iraq I accumulated a good amount of information on attacks, some first hand and some from other details. What an excellent learning opportunity that would be to get from someone that was personally involved. Right about now you’re saying, “OK that’s great but there are no car bombs here.” Well, you missed the point then and actually there was an unsuccessful one in New York Times Square (2010), and just recently the Boston Marathon bombing.

I’m not trying to say that everyone run out and start doing IED attack drills, but they are officially here now. This is something you should plan for and could equate to your vehicle down drills. Do you practice changing a tire under duress? Does the team stand around while 2 guys change a tire or are they setting up security around the vehicle?

If there was an attack on your principal remaining calm under pressure is a pretty good trait to have in this business. I’ve watched team members perform exactly as we trained when things went BOOM. This has cemented my belief in training, as long as it’s good training and not “checking the box” training. In fact I’ll even say that training saved our lives during a complex attack. To this day that detail has never had a principal receive so much as a scratch, that’s pretty impressive considering where we were working.

When something does happen will your EP agents be able to not only handle the situation, but also then be able to lower their posture afterwards quickly?

A wise friend once told me this; hiring a retired homicide detective will be great after your principal is killed, he will be able to investigate who killed him. So how does hiring a retired police officer benefit your detail? Unless he has training and experience it doesn’t. If you hired someone just because they can carry a gun I suggest you honestly re-evaluate your hiring requirements. Having a gun should be just another tool at your disposal it should not be the highest priority. If you do your job correctly using a gun will be the absolute last resort, it should never be your first priority. That same wise man also said if you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.

So you are asking how does this all equate to executive protection? What is the number one priority in EP? If you said to reduce the exposure of risk to your client you are correct. Everything we do in EP as well as PSD has the same goal, keeping your principal safe. The differences we have are cosmetic, we trained to a different level, used different tactics and worked where an attack was almost certain at times but at the heart of the matter it’s the same job. And don’t forget the previous experience with a family and corporate executives, or the other men and women that have worked in some of the most challenging places on earth. So if you would hire a Federal Agent who worked in Iraq, why is it you wouldn’t hire one of us?  We did their job and did it extremely well.

Yes I know there are those that will argue that we have nothing in common with their last dying breath. Our jobs were different, but having done both I’ll tell you they really are the same underneath all the hype. What we all need to do is to stop the negative stereotypes in our business, educate those who don’t understand, especially the media. Is working for the Secret Service the same as Executive Protection? Yes and no, same job but different style. The message everyone needs to understand is that the jobs are the same under the hood so to speak, but you need to adapt to the corporate world, because there are differences in the way things are done. Those who can adapt will do well and bring excellent experience to their new detail.

To those that will still dismiss us, it’s your loss.

The last thing I will ask you here is to take a look at the 3 pictures below. Which one of these guys would you most want to hire for your corporate or family security detail?

Feel free to vote in these polls, they are completely anonymous, all I will see is the voting numbers. I’ve added the second poll as it was too late to ask people to return to the first article a week later, and I’m just curious as to what type of experience is dropping by. Thanks! -Scott

Stay tuned for Part-3… Where we take a look at hiring requirements and doing your homework on potential employees with overseas experience.