 Welcome to Think Tech. Welcome to Community Matters here on Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. We're talking today about the FBI. What does the FBI do for the community? And the word community is kind of a larger community than you might have thought. And we have on the show the SAC, the Special Agent in Charge, Steven Merrill for Hawaii. And we have Vicky Kaitano, who is interested in what the FBI does. Hi, Vicky. Hi, Steven. Thank you for joining us. Hello, hi. Hi, and happy new year. Thank you. So, Steven, it's really a treat to meet somebody in the FBI because we see so much about the FBI and the media. All our lives, you know, we've been seeing and reading and hearing about what you do, all those very, very, very interesting things. And I don't think anybody will disagree. The FBI is the premier law enforcement, law investigation organization in the federal government, thus in the country, and that we rely on you for public safety and many, many other things. So can you give me a little definition of what it's like to be the SAC here in Hawaii? Well, thank you for your question. It's a pleasure to join you. And being the Special Agent in Charge in Hawaii is a lifelong dream of mine. And I just can't be happier to be here. My day is always interesting, like it has been my entire career in the FBI. But I really enjoy most getting to see what all our employees do every day. You know, some of it gets into the media and through court filings and that sort of thing. And I'm really glad to promote that. But the majority of things that go on in the FBI offices around the world go under the radar and unnoticed, but I get to see it firsthand. And I'm just so proud of the men and women in the FBI who work every day, you know, from every job title. And we have so many I'd be happy to talk about to protect the American people. I'll pull the Constitution. It really is a great responsibility, but something that I enjoy and has made my career incredibly fulfilling, helping me sleep at night every night just like all our employees do, knowing that we're doing good, supporting the American people and protecting them. Stephen, I won't ask you how I get your job because that would take too long here on the show. But I will ask you how I can sign up for the FBI. How Vicki and me can present ourselves in Quantico and become FBI agents and maybe come back to Hawaii as part of your group. Well, we'd love to have you. The FBI, again, we have a number of jobs, including special agent. We have so many different jobs, but to be a special agent, I hate to break the news to you. You have to be, we only hire people between the ages of 23 and 37 and you have to have a college degree. Other than that, we're open and we're always hiring. The FBI puts so many agents through the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia every year. This year being no exception. And it's a relatively short career because we have to retire by the time we're 57. So there's always an influx and outflow of FBI special agents. But again, the FBI is hiring and we'd love to hire locally here in Hawaii and Guam and Saipan so that our agent cadre looks like the community that we serve here. So Vicky, it looks like you would qualify. I'm not so sure I would. But I'd like to just say how important this organization is, not just to us as a state, nationally, but global security. And the things that the FBI does, I mean, you know, one of my favorite shows is at FBI. I spent three hours watching every single one of the series, but it's more than drama, mystery, espionage. It's about the security of our country. And I think that too often as a citizen, we take it for granted that we live in this great place. And there are people like the FBI who protect us in order to make sure that we have the security. And cybersecurity is definitely something that when special agent in charge, Steven Merrill talked about, you know, we all talk about computers, we take it for granted. But then when you talk about cybersecurity, I think the public at large needs to understand that and also more about the role of what the FBI does and how we as a community can be more proactive in supporting you to protect our place here. Well, if the viewer wants to know what the FBI does, I have a place to go. And that is the FBI website, which is fbi.gov, which I looked at today and I was really delighted to see the quality of this website. It's got everything. It tells everything that the FBI does, or at least in public, it tells all the services it renders to victims, witnesses, tipsters, you, there it is, there's the website. And Steven, I know it's a national website, but it's terrific. And I commend the FBI on putting that together. Any thoughts about the website? Is it working? Yeah, I'm glad you asked and thank you, Vicki, for your kind words. You know, the FBI website is, it enables a number of things to happen. One is that you can look at the FBI in general, find our job postings, our availability, where we have offices. And that's so important because using us as an example here in Honolulu, we rely on the public for tips to initiate cases, whether they be criminal or national security. So you can go on that website, you can submit tips, make complaints. You can look at our ic3.gov website, which has information about fraud schemes and other white collar frauds. And then, you know, referring back to Vicki's comments about the cyber, this is where it really goes to show that investigations and cyber investigations, as an example, are a team sport because we wanna work with our partners, our other federal partners, Homeland Security, Secret Service, our state and local law enforcement partners to help educate the public about cyber crime, as well as investigate it and hopefully put those responsible behind bars. But it is truly a team sport and we rely on the public to safeguard their systems, to keep track of all the updated patches and implement them into their systems. And when God forbid they are, you know, penetrated by a criminal element or otherwise, they can notify the FBI, we can work with them, we can work with companies to help develop plans for their cybersecurity so that when there is an intrusion, we can work together to try to backtrack and find out who is responsible and work with our prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office to hopefully put people in prison for defrauding and, you know, penetrating very sensitive to sometimes criminal, I'm sorry, cyber networks. Yeah, I'll volunteer for the grand jury and I'll volunteer for the penny jury as well and I'll be involved in that. So you guys were together at a conference not too long ago about cybersecurity. Vicky, can you talk about the conference? Well, you know, one of the things that impressed me as they were talking various members of this team is not just about the cybersecurity but the expanded work that they do in our community. And I don't know about many of our listeners, viewers, but for me, it was really impressive talking about, for example, safe online surfing, you know, we're taking action to prevent crimes against children, the ransomware literature that you had, teen and youth academies, everything to permeate the community so that we can all be part of this really purposeful, you know, mission to safeguard our families, our community outreach program. So I'd really encourage all of our viewers to get on that website and look about how we can all play a role. We don't have to be employed, but we can all as citizens of this place that we love really play an important role in the security and safety of our families. Absolutely, you know, to us, Steven, you are the rule of law. That's what you are. And we appreciate everything you do and it's so many things you do. You can spend a long time on that website and see so many things, dozens and dozens of functions you perform. Well, thanks, yeah. And to that point, I encourage people to go on the FBI website and you can even find the Honolulu sub-page of that. But to highlight Vicki's comments, we have a number of initiatives where we do get out in the public and conduct a lot of community outreach because, again, we're part of this community too. We go to the same schools. We have kids in the same schools. We shop at the same grocery stores. And some of those initiatives are actually coming up here in Honolulu where we host a citizens academy every year where we bring in the public to learn about the FBI and what we do and sort of the engagements that we have with the public. And that course is an eight week class and it's once a week every eight weeks. And each week, we look at a different part of what the FBI does. And it's a tremendously rewarding program for us because we get to meet the public and those people end up being the best advocates we have for the FBI that are in the communities explaining what we do. So it's more transparent to the public about the value we're playing in our communities across the country. Yeah, and a part of that I think is to evoke action by people, they've been saying for a long time, they've been saying, do something, participate in your community, participate in keeping it safe and healthy and prosperous and all that. And I think what you're talking about in large part is to elicit that kind of attitude among people in general, am I right? I agree, Jay. And there's about 13,000 FBI agents around the world and we can't be everywhere at once but we're asked to do more and more every year and we take on that responsibility but we rely on the public to be the eyes and ears and let us know when things look bad and smell bad so we can take a look. And if it's authorized, we'll open an investigation. So yeah, it really is a team game. We rely on the public, we rely on our partners and together we can all make our communities much safer. You know, Vicki mentioned, she has watched the FBI program on TV and there have been many, many programs and movies on TV, lots of media over the years. You guys, since your very origins 100 years ago sparked the imagination of the public and the country and the cases you've handled and so forth but I wonder if there's any myths out there that may be not so accurate, maybe myths that you may wanna dispel. Can you think of any? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that in these TV shows, whether it be about the FBI or any law enforcement agency that the cases get solved within 60 minutes and I hope that's the case. I would be very happy if our agents here in Honolulu came back every day with a success story but a lot of the things we do take a long time and as an example, as a young agent in the FBI I worked on a case called the Unibom case which was a nationwide bombing spree that lasted over 20 years. So I was lucky enough to spend the last three years of the case on the case versus some of my counterparts that came before me spent even 10 years on the same case and never saw the case come to trial or resolution. So I think the speed by which cases come are different in each instance but I wish they could all be done in 60 minutes. That case is on your website. You have some famous cases where you describe the efforts and ultimate success of the FBI and the Department of Justice in these really high profile cases. You also have the 10 top fugitives which I find very interesting and I suppose it's worthwhile to look at that because you never know whether the fellow sitting next to you is happens to be a fugitive. That's right. In fact, we had a success story just I think it was about 10 days ago a San Diego FBI investigation that was on the top 10 list that we were looking for someone. We ended up apprehending them. They were overseas working with our partners internationally and we brought or bringing them back if that hasn't happened already back to the mainland to go before a judge and that's the brilliance of another example of that website where the public can look at our top 10 list and there's people out there the reason we post that because there's people out there that have seen those people and met them before. So again, we can't thank the public enough for their participation and going the extra mile to help make their community safer by spending time on that website and providing tips when they can. Vicki, you were going to say something? Yeah, I was going to say that that's what I hope that having you on today will help us do the three A's awareness and an action commitment to assisting you folks for our community. But with that said, while we all share similar concerns no matter it's New York, Chicago, Hawaii is there something or some things here in Hawaii you feel that we need to be more cognizant of or more concerned about that we're not perhaps paying enough attention to? You know, I think in Hawaii we're pretty evenly balanced as an FBI office in between national security and criminal cases. And I think the public is well aware of the criminal cases. And we've had a number of successes investigatively over the past couple of years dealing with corruption and why we take special pride in that and make it a priority in this office because really the FBI while we do partner with our partner agencies on many different things that's really the one thing that we do on our own we have the sort of sole authority for that. So I think that is evidenced by the number of cases we've had successfully over the past few years it makes me worry that there's more cases that we're not aware of. So I think we could certainly use the public's help. The way I look at public corruption and fraud in general is that this is my money I'm a taxpayer just like everybody else and I do not wanna see my tax money being used for anything other than providing value to everybody here in our state. And so to your question, Vicki, I asked that the public take a special note that corruption is unacceptable here and help law enforcement to identify those people that are defrauding us and defrauding the taxpayers and using that money improperly. And also the second part of that we talked about it already briefly but cyber attacks those are certainly on a rise and I encourage everybody to look at ways to protect your systems whether you be one person or work for a company because I can guarantee you there's a host of cyber adversaries that are out there that are trying to penetrate your systems. You know, part of this is about public confidence too confidence that if I called you, you'll answer me. If I give you a tip, you'll take it serious I won't just go in the file and you will actually protect me and you will root out corruption and you will make my government something I can be proud of, I can be confident about. Public confidence is really central in a democracy and you are central in my view in public confidence, right? You know, you've given me a great opportunity in our office and opportunity to, you know talk about the FBI, which I'm always proud to do. And that really is part of our strategy here in the Honolulu FBI is that we're able to conduct investigations to the extent possible be transparent about them, talk about our successes and that hopefully will create this pinwheel effect where the public confidence increases we get more people applying to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and we get someone long after I've retired from the FBI, someone who's listening to this podcast or a newscast I'm on, you know in 20 years becomes a new FBI employee and does the same thing that I'm able to do which is spend a career, a very rewarding career fighting crime. And that really is where we're at now and I'm so proud of the fact that I'm able to talk about our successes because I think that does breed confidence the community has in the FBI and it's something we try very hard to earn every day and we do it through our work put our head down and hopefully some of these successes will cause again a young boy or girl out there to think that this is a career I wanna have when I graduate from college. Vicki, I get an emotional reaction when he talks like that. How about you? I do and I'm so proud of what you folks do and so honored that you're on today but my only wish would be that we'd have the same level of confidence at the state and county level, you know it's when I talk to friends, you're like well wait till the feds get them then it'll be then it's real business. That's really pitiful. So what? At the state and county it's funny business, you know why is it that we have to rely only when the national guys, the FBI get involved Department of Justice that we know that justice will then prevail especially when we talk about corruption. So thank you for doing that and I hope that leaders at the state and county level will start to say we can do this just as they do it. Yeah I have to say Vicki, you know we work very closely with our state and local counterparts all throughout the islands here, the four counties. A lot of things we do, we can't do without our local and county counterparts usually on the criminal side but yeah there are some things that the FBI has sold jurisdiction in but we're grateful for our task forces like our Joint Terrorism Task Force which really encompasses every group law enforcement agency here in our AOR our area of responsibility. And I really thank the chiefs and other federal heads of department that provide resources for us to make sure that this state remains safe. You know one of the things we've touched on is your international operations. That was a time, I give away my age when we saw the FBI as strictly national but over time it has become international. Can you describe that? Yeah the FBI has offices in US embassies and consulates and I think over 80 countries now and I was lucky enough very privileged to have served in two US embassies for long-term assignments totaling over six years representing the FBI and US law enforcement to our partners overseas. And what that really means is most people like you said know that we're a domestic law enforcement agency. We don't have US law enforcement authority we don't have that authority overseas nor do our foreign partners have authority here in the US. So in many ways you're half diplomat half police officer and in that role the FBI employees overseas are working with our partners in other countries to get work done. Like I mentioned that case where we identified a top 10 fugitive overseas the FBI would rely on that host country to make the arrest to process them through their court system and hopefully through the diplomatic extradition or deportation process I hand them over to FBI agents or other US marshals or their law enforcement where we can take them back so that they see justice before a US judge and the charges that we make here. So a lot of the partnerships because all the crimes that we investigate in many ways are international are just absolutely integral. And when I was overseas I had a number of cases as an example there was a US person that was overseas that was committing crimes against children very violent crimes. And I was able to work with the authorities in that country to arrest the person and I transported them back to the United States and they were before a judge 24 hours later. So it's a huge part of what we do whether it be cyber crime terrorism or even white collar fraud a lot of the subjects and victims we have are dispersed all over the world and with our network of law enforcement contacts we're able to make the world a smaller place and work cases jointly with our partners around the world. Well, sure it's a flat world, isn't it? How could you not? You know, the fact is that so many actors whether they be individuals or state actors around the world work against us and you can't just stay at home and not look out over the ocean and see issues and actors that you have to deal with. So it seems to me that the move to go international is absolutely necessary and will become all the more the case in years to come. Don't you agree? I agree. Yeah. So I- Go ahead, Vicky. You know, where you don't get cooperation does the FBI have a ability to go take it to another level or does it simply have to stop right there? Yeah, it's a good question. Not every country is equal and we have closer partnerships and historical partnerships in certain countries that we don't have with all of them. We are aided as a community in law enforcement internationally by the network known as Interpol which is based in Lyon, France. And I think there's 185, I might be wrong about the number but the majority of countries are Interpol countries so we can make requests through that system and get things done that way. But again, like I'm just so proud of the men and women of the FBI and that are overseas sometimes in very difficult places where the relationships aren't that good but by doing the right work the right way we've proven our, we've given those partners and even in a harder relationship to work and we've given those partners confidence in the FBI's ability to get things done and it's reciprocal. We do things for them to achieve both of our missions. So usually the system works pretty well and even though the US may not have great relationships with certain countries at a policeman to policeman or policewoman to policewoman relationship we're able to get the job done. I'd like to talk a little about espionage. We touched on that already. Years ago, I was about to sit on a federal jury over the charge of espionage on the stealth bomber here. That case was here. That was tried here. The Department of Justice provided prosecutors and they tried the case for conviction and a sentence right here. And of course the FBI was heavily involved in investigating that right here. So I thought that was very interesting. We have our share of international crime, international espionage right here, don't we? We certainly do, I'm glad you brought that up. Here in Hawaii, there are an incredible number of US government facilities personnel and I can guarantee your adversaries are trying to collect the information, whether it be records or information what people know out of their heads. And that is our job to help protect that. And we do that with our partners using the Department of Defense as an example. We have teams of people that work very closely to make sure that the assets that we have here in this state are being protected because yes, you're absolutely right. Our adversaries would like nothing more than to get our secrets and it's our job to protect that and we work very hard at it. You know, just earlier, we had a movie review of a series on Netflix called The Americans. The Americans was a serial on cable between, I think 2013, 2018, right in there somewhere. And it dealt with a KGB couple that existed outside the Beltway in Virginia in the years 1983 to 1986 or so. Very powerful series, get interesting reviews on it. And it involved a couple that were not really a couple that were sort of put together in a husband-wife partnership in Russia and assigned to be KGB agents in the United States and to do espionage and to do assassination and other violence. The very interesting series. And I know it's fictitious, fictional, but it really showed you a lot of things about how this all works. And I wonder if we have seen and the FBI has investigated other cases, there have been discussions about cases like that have been resolved in arrests right here in Hawaii involving embedded couples, families and the like that are really KGB agents. Can you talk about it? Yeah, I mean, to the extent I can talk about it, I believe that show is based on an FBI investigation that occurred at that time you mentioned and that is certainly something historically we've always done, especially during the Cold War. That was, it's a big part of the FBI, it always will be. But I think the best place to start for that would be if you've ever been to Washington DC going to the Spy Museum, which is located very close to FBI headquarters on the Mall in Washington. There's just an incredible array of spy gear, if you will that was uncovered and now is housed in that museum. And I think that'd be a great place to learn about the history of those sort of investigations that are in many ways, the truth is probably stranger than fiction, although the show portrays things in a certain way. But yeah, there's a large history on that and it's something that the FBI takes very seriously. Well, that's the thing that people don't realize. You know, you see so much fictional stuff and they say, oh, well, it's fiction. It's not really happening. But what I got out of that and what I am getting out of this is that it really does happen. And we live in a world where espionage is happening. And we must be aware of that. It's not just leave it to beaver. It's real serious in terms of information and undermining our government and the like. And we need you to do that. We want you to do that. And we have to be mindful of the fact that threat exists and you are doing that. Yeah, I think for some of our agents, the hardest part of the job is that they can't talk about what they do. And a lot of agents who all take this very seriously will work an entire career. And even sometimes the SAC might not be fully aware of the extent of what's going on. And that's part of the excitement of being an FBI employee and getting to see it firsthand. And that's something the public may never get to see, but it's something, again, we take very seriously and we're very proud of our work. So I wanted to also, before we close, I wanted to just get the call of the universe in which the FBI lives. So you work closely with the Department of Justice. We know that from the newspapers. You work with Homeland Security. You work with other security organizations. But what are your relationships within the government in terms of other agencies? Yeah, it's especially heightened here in Hawaii because we don't have the Calvary coming. We don't have another office in the FBI that you can drive to. We have 56 field offices. We're one of the few ones, maybe the only one, oh no, San Juan, where the only way to get there is to fly. What we do is we rely tremendously on our partnerships. And just to explain the US Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice, we're part of the Department of Justice. We do the investigation in FBI cases and the Department of Justice, our local US Attorney's Office, prosecutes those cases. And in terms of our federal partners, whether it be Department of Defense, like I mentioned, or Homeland Security, like you mentioned, the DEA, ATF, Secret Service, there's just so many that we partner on because, yeah, we're a team here and we have to be, but we're also, we really enjoy working together and we're a force multiplier when we're together. All of the different agencies have somewhat different authorities and when we work together, we're super strong because whether it be Postal Inspection Service or IRS, we can work together to make a team effort. And again, the best example of that is our Joint Terrorism Task Force, which every agency bands together to ensure, to the extent we can, that this state is protected from terrorist activities and that's one of the things, yes, that keeps us up at night, but again, the successes we've had have just been because we work as a team, whether it be state, local or other federal agencies. Now years ago, there were issues about different federal agencies, intelligence and law enforcement agencies working in silos, not sharing information, which resulted in problems in certain cases. It sounds to me like you have overcome that and that you are transparent between agencies and you do share. It's something we work very hard at and we can always make improvements, but yeah, one of the lessons coming off of 9-11 was that we were not sharing enough and that was a very hard lesson for our country and we made changes and I'm very proud as the SAC to know that I have great partnerships with all of my, all of our other agencies and myself or the lowest ranking person in our office can get on the phone and our partners will pick up the phone just like we will for them at a moment's notice and get things done for the American people. Vicky, we're almost out of time and I wanted to ask you if you had any other questions or what do you call summary comments you'd like to make? No, I just wanted to ask and not assume, but I would assume that there are strong relationships also with the military given the sensitive and important role that they play in our security as well. No, you're absolutely right, Vicky. We have great relationships with the Department of Defense and a lot of them have investigative arms that are not as big as the FBI, but just as important investigative parts of the different agencies. So yeah, we work very closely because our mission in addition to criminal investigations is national security and a lot of obviously a huge part of our national security is what goes on with our Department of Defense. So we want to provide every resource we can to work with them to make sure our people, our mission is are all being safeguarded. Thank you. Vicky, do you have any comments, reactions, thoughts to leave our listeners with? No, I just want to thank you again for being on with us today and to just really emphasize, we can all play a role in this and it's important because I think the threats only get more, not less. And it's going to take all of us working together in order to safeguard what we value so much in our democracy and in our communities. Yeah, well said. And what would you leave with us, Steven? You know, what message would you leave the public? And let me add to go on what Vicky said is that I think the public really likes and loves the FBI. You stand between us and lawlessness. You provide public safety for us. You keep the country safe and healthy. So as time goes by, I think you will find there are more issues on your desk and to the extent of public, we'd like to call you back and talk to you some more actually. But I think as time goes by, the FBI will become all the more recognized and all the more important and hopefully all the better funded as well. So what are your parting comments for our viewers? Well, thanks again for the opportunity and thanks for the kind words. I just want the public to know that, you know, every person from top to bottom in every FBI office, but here in Hawaii as an example is working very hard. And, you know, we tend to get brought into political arguments and discussions around the world. The FBI, we're not a political organization. We just put our heads down, follow the facts where they lead us. And we work again with our partners in the U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute cases when we've been able to prove that laws have been broken. But I'm just so proud of our people. If the public could see what goes on in the FBI office, they'd really be proud of the men and women here who, again, just put their heads down, get the work done, and are very proud to serve the American people every day. Thank you, Stephen. Stephen Merrill, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Hawaii. And thank you, Vicki, for coming on the show and talking about your cyber experience at the conference and all the other issues. I particularly enjoyed your question about the connection between the FBI and the military. Very important question. Thank you both so much. Thank you. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.