Chats with law enforcement experts and leaders
Hi. This is sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith at the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have with me a guest today. We did we did some radio together, and as I listened to him talk, I'm like, I need to know more about this guy. So I did some research, and, he is someone that you all need to get to know.
Betsy Smith:He's he's got an amazing career, as a law enforcement officer and then beyond. He's now a business owner, and, and he's got opinions and expertise that I think the rest of the country really needs to hear. Chris Senko, welcome to the show.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.
Betsy Smith:So, I'm gonna ask you what I ask everybody who was a cop on my show. Why'd you become a cop?
Christopher W. Hinkle:You know, when I was 6 years old, 1970, so people can figure out how old I am, My mom, we didn't have a lot of money. I I grew up super poor. And but I didn't know that. My parents we I never knew that we were poor, not at Christmas time or anything like that. Great parents.
Christopher W. Hinkle:My mom took me to Skyland Elementary, and it was the book fair. And back in those days, you could pay a couple of bucks and sponsor a book for your local school library, and the book I sponsored was about the FBI. And, of course, like all of my generation and the boomer generation, we grew up watching the FBI with Efraim Zimbliss junior. And it was I was just enamored with it. So that kind of started my journey of of thinking about what I wanted to do.
Christopher W. Hinkle:As I got into elementary education, I started reading a book series called Encyclopedia Brown. He was boy detective, and it it was amazing because he would have cases that he would solve. And at the end of the chapter, it would say, now what do you think? And you had to figure out how to solve the case. And at the back of the book, they would have the answers of how the case was solved and how he came to his conclusions, and I was just amazed by it.
Christopher W. Hinkle:So time passed. I started developing a a bit of a taste for politics in junior high. I had a great, fantastic civics teacher that got me involved in understanding the constitution and learning about it. She also helped me out with kinda crafting how to debate. Went through high school.
Christopher W. Hinkle:We didn't have the money really for me to go to college. I dabbled in community college here and there and ended up joining the military. I I felt like if I stayed in my hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I was gonna be relegated to just some type of manual labor. And I really needed to get out on my own. So I joined the air force and spent 13 years there.
Christopher W. Hinkle:And the last five of that, I got the opportunity to be an investigator, a federal agent. By cross training to become an air force office, a special investigations agent, OSI. There is an OSI just like you see on the $6,000,000 Man series, just like the Steve Canyon, comic strip. I did that for about 5 years, finished up finally finished up my degree, and the FBI came calling. I've worked some cases with them in on the coast of Mississippi, and they encouraged me to apply.
Christopher W. Hinkle:It took about a year. I left the air force with about 4 or 5 months of of a gap between the air force and the FBI. Joined, went to the FBI Academy. I feel like I was blessed from the start with that. I was living my dream.
Christopher W. Hinkle:It was amazing. What I thought was interesting is it didn't matter that I had a degree in education in psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. Sitting next to me were graduates of military academies, Harvard, Yale. And guess what? We were all in the same spot, and we all got the same opportunities to start.
Christopher W. Hinkle:It I was assigned to the Washington field office in 1999, and I was on the National Computer Crime Squad. I had had a background in some computer forensics as an OSI agent and spent some time there. Had great cases, experiences, worked some major online undercover operations. Some of my operations ran for 7 or 8 years. Even after I left Washington DC, they were still running.
Christopher W. Hinkle:And 911 happened. I was out that Tuesday morning with the Safe Streets squad. There were about 60 of us, helping out the Safe Streets squad squad with some search and arrest. And we finished up, about 7 or 8 in the morning, and 2 friends of mine and I went to eat at Bob and Edith's restaurant in Crystal City. Got something to be driving home.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I'm next to the Pentagon stuck in traffic, and my wife called me. One of the few agents to have a cell phone at that time. I had it as part of an undercover operation managing it. And she said, where are you? And I told her.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I said, I'm on the east side of the Pentagon underneath a bridge. And she said, well, your friend David is on his way to New York. Some planes have hit some towers up there. I said, okay. I'll get home as quick as I can.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Took the exit, got up on I 66, heading to Centerville, Virginia. Call comes over the radio, planes hit the Pentagon. I didn't see my squad until February after that. We were working that hard. I worked 28 days in a row of 18 hour days before I realized that I was supposed to take a day off.
Christopher W. Hinkle:We were just so focused on getting things done. And I did some digging in the rubble pile, volunteered to go do that. I did multiple things of, getting to meet some famous people. Another time, we'll have to have a conversation about my meeting with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post after 911. Not a pleasant man, but that's a story from another day.
Christopher W. Hinkle:So I spent my, 1st 7 years in Washington DC, did some time at headquarters, and then transferred down to the the FBI Jackson division. And I was told I was coming down here to run a violent crime, gangs, drugs program, and cybercrime program. When I showed up, they said you're also gonna manage the civil rights program, kind of the birthplace of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. And during my tenure of doing that, we had some amazing cases. We reopened the Mississippi burning case.
Christopher W. Hinkle:We tied James Ford's seal to the murders of Schwarn, Chaney, and Goodman, put him in prison. We went after the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi who was constantly violating civil rights and big cases there. After a few years on the desk, I just had a yearning to get back to working cases. It's it's tough to shield the agents that are assigned under you from front office and management so that they can do their jobs. And you have to live vicariously through them.
Christopher W. Hinkle:So I just decided to step out of management. I went back to working cases, ended up working counterintelligence and cyber, became a hostage negotiator. And then I wanted to try my skills at interrogation. So I went and spent 5 months in a Baghdad prison in, 2009 interrogating jihadis and battlefield combatants. Came back from there and started getting a little more senior in my tenure in the FBI, and the front office asked me to take over multiple programs.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I became a subject matter expert in the FBI's integrated program management, IPM, which measures all of the metrics inside the FBI. I wanted to understand what we're supposed to focus on and how we get credit for it. And they also asked me to take over the InfraGard program, the Domestic Security Alliance Council program, and the diversity and inclusion program. Here's this bible believing conservative from the south that's going to take on the diversity and inclusion program. Our our program down there was a mess.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I refocused it back on back on to the things that matter. We started sell instead of celebrating some of these immutable characteristic months, we started celebrating Veterans Day, the, Holocaust Remembrance Day, things like that. And I got an opportunity to hear what was happening on the other side of the wall, and that really troubled me. I I was seeing firsthand how this diversity, equity, and inclusion was just a cancer on the FBI. And I did what I could while I was in, retired in 2019, stayed here in in Mississippi, started an investigative services business.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I do, services and consulting for several law firms in the state, and I also do some contract work on the side. Once I became unencumbered by the Hatch Act and was able to speak freely about what I thought about things, and my focus has always been on the constitution. Thank you, Emma Jean Nichols, my 7th grade civics teacher, for lighting that fire. I started speaking out. I noticed during 2020, during the COVID overreach, that there were a lot of things these governors and officials were doing that were beyond the constraints of the constitution, and I started speaking out on it.
Christopher W. Hinkle:The next thing I know, I'm speaking before school boards, state, educational institutions, wrote a couple of articles, some for Homeland Security Today, some for Havoc Journal, and the Montana Free Press. And I had some individuals approach me about guest hosting on the radio. We're actually coming in as a guest, then guest hosting, and that led to others hearing about me. I've gotten a chance to appear on Newsmax and other place. I just am amazed at what god keeps blessing me with.
Christopher W. Hinkle:And that blessing brought me here today with you, the fortunate, blessing that we were both on the same radio podcast, and we got to interact. And now I have the opportunity to, tell people a little bit about myself and what my focus is. I am a constitutional conservative at heart, Strict actualist. I don't consider myself a Democrat or Republican. I just focus on the constitution.
Betsy Smith:When you look at the current FBI, where do you think they are headed right now in when we go to 2025?
Christopher W. Hinkle:So I I think the FBI has a great opportunity to, to do a course correction. I'm not one of the big fans of tear the whole thing down. I I think that Kash Patel's, comment about, you know, emptying the FBI headquarters building, I think that's hyperbole. I think he'll realize once he gets there that that that's just not doable. First of all, there's not 9,000 agents at FBI headquarters.
Christopher W. Hinkle:It's mostly support staff. But I think he has an opportunity to course correct and get the FBI and the DOJ back within the constraints of the constitution, the guardrails of the constitution as I say. And I I constitution, as I say. And I I think if he hits the the ground running, there there's some simple things that he could do right away. I'm I'm working on an article right now, to get out there.
Christopher W. Hinkle:4 or 5 things that he could do day 1. 1st, he needs to set the tone and reestablish the US constitution at the cornerstone of everything that's done in the FBI from physical fitness to firearms training to everything else investigation wise that they do. The the FBI needs to understand that the constitution is there to restrict them. And I think that they've gotten outside those guardrails with the targeting of parents before school boards, the Catholic memo. All of those are symptoms of things that are bigger things that are going on in the inside.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Even the targeting of the number of these January 6 people and which I which I I I honestly support president Trump coming in and pardoning every one of them. It it's enough. Other things that need to be done right away, you need to eliminate all DEI and diversity programs from the FBI. All. We don't hire up based on immutable characteristics.
Christopher W. Hinkle:You wanna measure it after the fact, that's fine. But it can't be the focus of the people that you bring in. There's no measures that show just because you're a white male or a black female, that you're a better investigator than anyone else. It's about merit. And they have a chief diversity officer.
Christopher W. Hinkle:That position's gone. They have a division level diversity program inside the FBI. Gotta go. Get rid of that. The other is reestablish the core values and standards of the FBI.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Get back to fidelity, bravery, integrity. Get back to agents looking like agents. I remember growing up, whenever I close my eyes and think of an FBI agent, they're always the person in the suit. You know this probably from your time in law enforcement. When people show up on the scene and they wanna know who's in charge, they're typically looking for the person in the suit.
Christopher W. Hinkle:There's there's no reason you there's no reason why you can't look the part every day. And I think we need to get back to that. I I just I'm disheartened every time I see these screen cam videos of people knocking on doors saying that they're FBI agents, and they're in cargo pants, hiking boots, and a polo shirt. It it it's just unprofessional.
Betsy Smith:I'm glad you said that because one of the things that I saw in my career was because I work quite a bit with the FBI. Plus, where I was a cop, the, most of the FBI agents in our region lived in my city. We we literally called it club fed. And, and so we had personal relationships with a lot of FBI agents. And one of the things that I saw into the late eighties and on into the nineties was the FBI start to kind of lose focus, and they would, oh, we're gonna do narcotics for a while, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that.
Betsy Smith:And and they would sort of chase and I know the agents, the the boots on the ground agents that I talked to were frustrated because this is not what they had been hired to do. They're like, if I wanted to chase narcotics, I'd go to the DEA. And, I I saw that really up until I retired. Do you think do you think cash can bring that back, that focus, and should it come back?
Christopher W. Hinkle:I think it should come back, and I think the the agents on the ground are desirous for that to happen. The the FBI is a career choice, and that career choice is a professional career choice, and it's restricted by the constitution. And I I got the feeling that the majority of the agents that I work with, even the younger ones that were coming in as as I was getting close to retirement, it was it was a little unnerving to to recognize when a brand new agent would come into the office, and I realized I was old enough to be that agent's father. I think that's when I knew it was time to probably move on and let others take over. But there was an excitement to the more successful agents that they they got it, the the professionalism in the job.
Christopher W. Hinkle:The problem that we have is there's a number of agents that were hired that and analysts that are the product of the woke education, and they bring those ideas and thoughts in, to talk a little bit about 2 things that I observed. There was 1, it was a young analyst in the office, and this was probably a couple of year few years before I retired. And I was commenting on something about the constitution, and she vehemently disagreed. She's in her twenties. And I pointed out chapter and verse.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I I don't yell and scream. I just talk. And I pointed out to her why it's important, the, the the guardrails and the the strict constraints of the constitution and the government and the FBI as part of that. And she said, well, we disagree, but here's the good thing about it. You're gonna retire.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I'll still be here. Those people have no business in the FBI. If we had agents that weren't strict adherence to the constitution when I came in on the nineties, they kept it closeted. We just did the job. So
Betsy Smith:And and, you know, you and I, who both spent our most of our adult lives in government, know that the government needs to be restricted, that we should not we should not have unfettered powers as law enforcement. Would you agree?
Christopher W. Hinkle:I agree with that. That that's why there's a you know, one of the other another thing that I recommend to Akash Patel is set this as a goal and objective similar to what Louis Freeh did when he took over as director in 93. Cash should come in and just blanketly say, we're going to reduce, eliminate 50% of all senior executive positions. Right now in the FBI, there's between 3035 divisions in the FBI that are all headed by senior executives, assistant director level individuals. When Louis Free made the changes back in 93 and it was approved in 96, there were 12.
Christopher W. Hinkle:You've gotta get rid of the layers of bureaucracy they created. This was a a Robert Mueller thing who was a horrific director. He was a he was a a very mean individual. Like, I heard that directly from people that worked on his staff. He's he's just not a good man.
Christopher W. Hinkle:And he changed, and he he put layers in there. So he created additional divisions. He created an executive assistant director position. So you keep adding these bureaucratic layers between the field and headquarters. That coupled with his focus of having cases run from Washington DC, you got away from the things that you were just talking about about agents living in the community and knowing your domain to you had to focus first on what headquarters told you your domain was.
Christopher W. Hinkle:And if you disagreed with them, you had to spend your time proving them wrong before you could make changes. I'll give you an example, and this is not classified or anything. There was a focus during the Obama administration to look under every rock for every Russian you could find. I had already been in Mississippi for a number of years. I knew what my domain domain was based on my liaison contacts, tripwires, sources, cases.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Just wasn't the case down here. But I remember the analyst at headquarters telling me, I don't care. You have to still go ask all of these questions and spend an inordinate amount of your time looking into this before you can go look into something else. It it just was a waste of time. There's a couple of other things that I would also recommend to him.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I don't know how familiar you are with the FBI Agents Association. It's a kind of de facto union, which I I'm not a big fan of of, public sector unions. The the issue that I have with it is especially during the Mueller term and the Comey term, and I I can only imagine Chris Wray had only been director for a short period of time before I left, that the agents association, its leadership that we had when I was in, became enamored with the 7th floor at FBI headquarters. It ceased being something that was speaking on issues and concerns of the agents in the field, and it became a mouthpiece of headquarters. I can tell you over 50% of the people that I worked with in the Jackson division left the agents association because of that.
Christopher W. Hinkle:They wanted to get back to doing the job and not have some individual spending an inordinate amount of their time doing agents association work. I know personally the guy that was the president of the agents association for the last 10 years before I retired, he spent about 75% of his agent work doing things for the agents association. Get that guy back out in the field working cases. If you wanna have an agents association, let it be separate from the FBI. Let it be retired agents or whoever they hire.
Christopher W. Hinkle:But don't take agents off the street and have 50 to 75% of their time toward that. I I just think you need to get rid of it. And we can go in in in other areas too, of changes. But these are things day 1. Reestablish the constitution, eliminate all DEI and diversity programs, reestablish the core values, get rid of diversity as a core value it's not, reduce FBI senior executive positions at FBI headquarters by 50%, and eliminate the FBI Agents Association.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Has has no bearing on on day to day activities for the agents anymore.
Betsy Smith:Well and this is why the National Police Association endorsed Kash Patel, you know, as, the director of the FBI. And we don't get involved in that stuff very often, but we felt very strongly, because as the FBI goes, very often, so does local law enforcement. And the the reputation of the FBI, if that can be improved, I you know, we believe that will trickle down. Do you think that and we we only have about 5 minutes left. Do you think that a a lot of this top level management, this cushion between, the agents and the director, do you think a lot of those will self select and and retire, go do something else when Patel comes in?
Christopher W. Hinkle:I think a number of them will. I had heard rumors about, Chris Wray retiring, and I I believe Paul Abad is the deputy director. Abad needs to go as well. Trump, when when he comes in on 20th, you you don't need a deputy director sitting in that seat as acting director. We just had that with Andrew McCabe.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Disgraced tarnishment of the badge individual, Andrew McCabe, as the acting director. He needs to have his people in there running this. I think Cash has the opportunity to really correct things. I've got a recommendation for deputy director, someone I I know personally that can help Cash navigate the FBI, to kinda know where to, you know, the phrase where the bodies are buried, things that need to be changed. I think Jim Galliano would be a great person.
Christopher W. Hinkle:He's
Betsy Smith:I could not agree more.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Jim is a great guy. He is full disclosure, he's in a little private text group with about 4 or 5 of us, and we've been talking for the last couple of years. God has brought us together. I've never met Jim in person, but I consider him one of my dear, dear friends. I think Jim would be great.
Christopher W. Hinkle:He's getting ready to finish up his term as mayor of Cornwall in the Hudson. He's an outspoken critic of the things that, Comey, McCabe Comey, McCabe, Mueller, and Ray have done, horrible directors. I think having somebody like, Jim Galliano in there as deputy director to kinda really run things while Cash goes out and, corrects other things, I think we'd be a great team.
Betsy Smith:Last question. Do you think the American public is, are we gonna eventually get the truth about January 6th, especially the FBI's involvement?
Christopher W. Hinkle:We need to get multiple truths out there. Kash Patel should fully disclose the FBI's involvement in there. Transparency is the only way you're gonna get the trust back of the FBI. There's other things that he should also disclose. We need to see the manifesto of the Nashville transgender domestic terrorist that killed those kids in the school.
Christopher W. Hinkle:We
Betsy Smith:should talk about the National Police Association, we were the first, police organization, the first organization at all to to sue, to try and get that manifesto, and we got stonewalled at every turn.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Yeah. We know more about this Mangione guy in the last, what, 24 to 48 hours than we ever know about this individual. There's nothing in there. This this thing where they where the FBI and and I I criticize Chris Wray constantly about it, of cloaking first cloaking himself in the reputation of the great great men and women that are FBI agents in the field just to obfuscate himself from congressional oversight. The other thing is when when he when they wanna get their way, they take these congressmen and senators behind closed doors.
Christopher W. Hinkle:They show them a classified briefing, scare the crap out of them so that they can get more money. It it really shouldn't be that way. And, I think cash is gonna have a great opportunity to change that.
Betsy Smith:Chris, we have a lot to look forward to. I just have a couple minutes left. Tell folks where they can find you, where they can follow you, and get to know you better.
Christopher W. Hinkle:Well, the best way to find me is on x, at the at my reluctance and the insistence of people like John Nance, my friend that writes at townhall.com, and, Jim Galliano, they encouraged me to get out on x. I got on it a couple of months ago. I'm I'm enjoying it as an as a news source. I am, on x at the, letter b, the letter f, conservative. B f conservative.
Christopher W. Hinkle:It stands for Blunt Force Conservative. My good friend and, radio show host down here, Jamieson Haygood, helped me coin that. Because when I speak about the constitution, I I speak from knowledge and experience, and I'm blunt with what I say. I'm not rude. I'm not belligerent.
Christopher W. Hinkle:I just say what it says. I I believe like Scalia said. Constitution says what it says and nothing else. Otherwise, 5 hotshot lawyers sitting on the court being running the country.
Betsy Smith:I love it. I love it. Well, Chris Ingo, we cannot thank you enough for spending time with us today. I'm gonna have to have you back pretty soon.
Christopher W. Hinkle:And Thank you very much. I'll I'll have to have you in the on the next time I guest host on the radio so we can chat more.
Betsy Smith:Absolutely. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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