Inside the Bureau's Largest Security Operation Ever

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Let’s go to Washington and what is today is Christopher Rare and he is the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he was involved, he was involved in what did he call it for? What does FIFER stand for? The Federation of International Football Association and WHOA what a home run? That was over one

0:27 hundred billion people ended up watching it. And I understand the number was we had one hundred and four games in America and seven million people in the seats, and the FBI was responsible to make sure they keep those seven million people, I guess safe and they did a great job. Well, Christopher Area, tell us what happened.

0:52 Speaker 2 Oh, first of all, John, thanks for having me. I always enjoyed coming on your show. And I think I’ll tell you this every time every day i’m further away from New York, I miss it more and more so I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, I got to tell you, I got to be honest with you. Done last two

1:09 or three the last two or three weeks, last thirty nine days, if you will. It has been a challenge for the FBI, very resource intensive related to FIFA and just keeping the American people safe along with our you know, federal other federal, state, and local partners. I might start with just a few numbers here to let you know

1:29 what we were, what we responded with. So for us, this was really an all hands on deck bureau wide. Again, we’re talking about eleven cities across the country, seventy eight just here in the United States. I believe it was one hundred and four or one hundred sum across the across North America. But we dedicated five thousand different personnel

1:52 to this effort. We conducted something like one of one of our duties was to conduct background checks for coaches, other personnel players. We conducted some like three hundred thousand background checks for folks. We tracked a myriad of threats in the US outside of the US, And I know I speak for the director when I say I’m really

2:13 really proud of how the Bureau responded here and how the Bureau performed here. This was a special event of epic proportions for two different reasons. Really one the breadth depth and scale of it. Again, eleven in the compass eleven cities, seventy eight some games, and each one of those games was the size of the Super Bowl, if

2:36 not larger. And so when you put those two things together, normally, you know we have just one Super Bowl a year we have to worry about, well, we had seventy eight we had to worry about in the matter of thirty nine days. And then on top of that, the last time some event like this came came to the United

2:54 States of this magnitude was nineteen ninety four, and a lot of things have happened since nineteen ninety four. Nine to eleven hadn’t even happened yet, threats have gotten much more complex, they’ve gotten much more pervasive, and so so really for us, this was a historic response and again, partnering with our state, local, and other federal partners, a

3:16 historic response and we’ve performed very very well, kept everybody safe and our citizens along with other citizens from rest from around the world enjoyed, enjoyed the game. For the thirty nine days was.

3:29 Speaker 1 Just the big biggest task in FBI history. I mean it seemed like, what was it over a few week period, you had that many people say, you know that you had.

3:40 Speaker 2 To protect Yeah, absolutely, this was the largest what we call special events. So we do we give special event designations to these rather large things. So think rather large events that happened throughout the country each year. I think Inauguration, ANGA, which I know you’re familiar with, United Nations, General Assembly, the super Bowl. We give special event designations to those.

4:05 This special event for FIFA was the largest encompass the most area as far as eleven cities. It went on for thirty nine days and brought in the most amount of people that we have seen in the history of the sport and of our special event designations.

4:26 Speaker 1 Now a week ago, so the Secret Service beta announcement that they had over ten thousand threats that they had to check out against the people they protect within the Secret Service. So did you have any amount of threats that you could talk about.

4:49 Speaker 2 Yeah, No, absolutely, we had threats come in every day. In fact, that was probably John Our major role was really threat mitigation, and so we had we were in charge of what we called the Intelligence Coordination Center, and that was stood up here in the Hoover Building, and that was a conglomeration of FBI, all of our intelligence

5:10 are you sick partners, all of our other federal, state and local partners, and we housed them in one area and as threats came in. Now, look, ninety nine point nine percent of these threats were completely innocuous, right, they were uncredible, unspecified, and there wasn’t much to it. But when you have a threat of this size and this magnitude,

5:33 it is a huge terrorist target. So we have got to run every single one of those threats, every single one of those threats to the ground. And so I don’t have the number in front of me. I do know it was in the thousands. I do know that we did produce over one hundred intelligence reports that got

5:50 sent to our state local and partners, just making state local and other federal partners, just making them aware that there was a threat and to be on the lookout. But again, and the majority of those threats were all unspecified, not credible, and we ran, we ran the majority of those of those things to ground.

6:09 Speaker 1 Now I understand by the way, the other two numbers I have in the final game, and I might have said it before, two billion people watched it, which is a record record record number, and also within all the games, the number minimum. And I talked to Andrew Giuliani. I think that’s where I got it from. Over a hundred

6:34 big in people have watched all the games on television or internet, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and it might have been a lot more than one hundred biggin and the you know what, the President was saying that he’d love to do this event again in twenty twenty eight.

6:53 And I guess soccer could be competing with American football.

7:02 Speaker 2 Well, I think if you take a look, John, I think soccer, uh you know, globally is much larger than than American football, as much as I hate to say it being a football fan. And I think we saw that.

7:13 We just saw we saw how popular that sport is in the last thirty nine days, with all the people that you had just mentioned, all the viewership and everybody who came to these cities around the country to enjoy, to enjoy themselves and enjoy the sport.

7:27 Speaker 1 Now, one more thing. I spoke to doctor Odge last week and we talked about on our w ABC radio show that about Medicare and Medicaid and and all the fraud going on. Tell us, is the FBI involved in helping them on us fraud?

7:49 Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely, We’re intimately involved. In fact, doctor Oz and I participated in a press conference here a while back in Minnesota. So I gotta I got a chance to really sit down with him and and and UH talk about the amount of threat, amount of fraud uh with him personally. And so it was, it was, it was

8:07 a phenomenal discussion. But but yeah, I will tell you we in in the last six to eight months, we have pumped a lot of energy, a lot of calories into our fraud threats and and and once the Vice President stood up the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud and and created the d o j’s National Fraud Enforcement Division,

8:29 I will tell you the FBI was all was all in on that. Another thing we did we uh, in addition to surging resources making cases arresting folkuses, we started a novel concept. We started a most wanted fraudsters list, much like our top ten lists or much like our most wanted list, but specifically focused on the most egregious

8:50 fraudsters that we were looking for, that had been indicted, that had skipped out, you know, during trial waiting for trial, and and and we just used that concept in order to bring some bring some notoriety to it. And I cannot tell you how highly successful that most that that most Wanted Fraudsters list is in just five weeks since

9:15 we launched this initiative, UH, we captured three three of our most wanted fraudsters UH that were that had done some of the most egregious illicit schemes UH in in in the country. Not talking about millions of dollars. Some of these schemes were were almost into the billions of dollars, defrauding medicare, defrauding medicaid. You’ve heard obviously you’ve heard about

9:41 Feeding our Futures, which was a was it was a child nutritious uh a uh a rampid child nutrition program that was that was illicitly UH that that was defrauded of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. We had a couple of those folks put on the fraudster list as well, and we’ve had a lot, a lot of success in

10:02 that space. We’re going to continue to work in that space, and I think we’re going to continue to get more fraudsters, most of these a lot of these most wanted fraudsters off the list. And from working this stuff for the last twenty three years, John, I will tell you this type of energy, this type of work into this space

10:23 is long long overdue. These fraudsters. They take advantage of our most vulnerable population, are mentally challenged, our elderly population, our poor population, and they just fraud them for everything that they own. And so the fact that we’re putting a lot of attention on this through the White House Task Force in the DOJ National Fraud Enforcement Division, I

10:48 can’t think of a better way to use our resources right now than combatting that.

10:52 Speaker 1 Wow. All I can say is wow. And I want to say thank you, thank you for the great job you’re doing with the FBI, the great job that Cash Patel is doing with the FBI. You guys have come a long way and and let me tell you, I look forward to talk to you again real soon and

11:14 letting all Americans realize what is going on in America.

11:19 Speaker 2 Excellent. Well, thank you, John. I appreciate always enjoy our time together and really appreciate being able to highlight the FBI’s work that we’re doing for the American people. So thank you and have a good day, sir

11:31 Speaker 1 Thank you, and thank you for all Americans.