Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team | Kyle Vowinkel

Kyle Vowinkel (0:00)

And it goes south from there. So HRT come, the Assaulters come, vehicle right up the front, and it's a shootout. Rounds start coming both ways. We're shooting at him, they're shooting.

And we have one of our guys who got shot really badly at the porch. He gets two right underneath the vest. He goes down to a knee. Same guy, Whit, then is right there at the window. He stands in front of the window to obscure fire, fires at the guy. Well, two other guys go grab him, move him off the porch, get him around the corner, and they start providing him medical care until the ambulance can pull up. So there's a longer, like 20-minute firefight going back and forth. He then, at one point, opens the front door, shoves his wife out.

It's like, holy moly, there's another person inside.

Jack Murphy (1:00)

Hey, folks, welcome to The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, and we're very happy to have in studio our guest today, Kyle Vowinkle. He is the author of Shaping Chaos. It's a new book about leadership, but also it infuses some actual lessons from your career.

He spent 25 years at the FBI and very interestingly served in both the Hostage Rescue Team and Crisis Negotiation Unit, probably one of the very few people that have served in both of those outfits.

Kyle Vowinkel (1:29)

There's only been a handful of us, crazy enough to make that switch.

Jack Murphy (1:34)

Kyle, he went to West Point, spent time in the military police, then went to the FBI, HRT, JSOC deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and some other stuff also present for the Boston Marathon bombing, Aftermath, and the Alabama Bunker Boy rescue, that HRT and CNU participated in successfully rescuing a kidnapped kid. There's a lot to talk about here.

Thanks for being on the show, Kyle.

Kyle Vowinkel (2:03)

No, thanks for having me. Yeah, fortunate, truly to be part of some successful teams, did some exceptional work.

Jack Murphy (2:09)

Yeah. Take us to the beginning, tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what interested you at first in the Army.

Kyle Vowinkel (2:19)

I grew up in San Diego, right next to Miramar, Top Gun, Jets, Roaring Overhead. Cool. My dad is a Naval Aviator in Vietnam, so very patriotic city. I grew up in the 80s watching like Rambo, Red Dawn and Rocky. Love those movies, so much so my brother, he was older. We would dress up and play Army. We went to the old surplus stores, bought camouflage fatigues. Imagine doing this today. Like we 14-year-old boys wearing full camo, plastic guns, we would spray paint black, so they looked real. We'd camo up our face and we walked down the middle of the street to the canyon. Four or five dudes. People call the police, we'd never get out of our house. Yeah. We loved playing Army, if that makes sense. Even though we're in a Navy town with a Navy dad, although he went to the Reserves after his active duty time and obviously I wasn't alive when he was in Vietnam. But I grew up in that community and my dad really modeled that service to country. But I was kind of a rebellious kid, argued a lot with my mom.

I was the Hank of twice.

Went to police, gotten five car crashes.

Jack Murphy (3:27)

So that's your introduction to law enforcement.

Kyle Vowinkel (3:29)

Exactly. My dad actually worked for San Diego PD for a couple of years and crashed five of my parents' cars and I was not a good kid.

Jack Murphy (3:43)

So did the army come about because a judge or maybe your dad were like, yeah, you're destined for military service?

Kyle Vowinkel (3:54)

Good question. My parents suddenly thought I could possibly end up in jail. Because I would sneak out of the house and we would never do anything seriously wrong but we snuck in the community pool and swam at midnight on Sunday night. Again, doing no destruction.

Did destroy some pumpkins on Halloween and that was the first time I got handcuffed. We took somebody's pumpkin and destroyed it, which we should have done and a cop took me back and cuffs to my parents. Thankfully, it was never written up. Sorry, Mom and Dad. That was my first time. The second time was Senior Ditch Day. The cops came to Senior Ditch Day and broke it up. I was never placed in detention or I should say never taken in custody. To jail, but just on site.

My brother was two and a half years older and he went to West Point. He got in and it wasn't until I visited him when I saw four-year high school, that I saw the Academy grounds and more importantly, all the cadets and the discipline, the tribe, the military was, the cohesion, the morale and the esprit de corps.