- 1 week ago
From your first application to the day you retire as a ghost, this is what climbing every rank in the DEA really costs a man.
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Applicant
3:28 The Trainee
6:13 The Special Agent
9:16 The Undercover Agent
11:55 The Group Supervisor
14:39 The Assistant Special Agent In Charge
16:54 The Special Agent In Charge
19:29 The Country Attaché
21:57 The Chief Of Operations
24:41 The Ghost
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Applicant
3:28 The Trainee
6:13 The Special Agent
9:16 The Undercover Agent
11:55 The Group Supervisor
14:39 The Assistant Special Agent In Charge
16:54 The Special Agent In Charge
19:29 The Country Attaché
21:57 The Chief Of Operations
24:41 The Ghost
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Applicant
00:01You are 24 years old.
00:04You have a criminal justice degree and a pile of student loans.
00:08You have watched too many movies about agents kicking down doors.
00:12You work a boring job at a security firm checking badges.
00:16You stand at a desk all day.
00:19You watch people come and go.
00:22You want something that matters.
00:23You want a story worth telling.
00:26You fill out the application on the DEA website one night in your apartment.
00:30Your name, your education, your work history, your references.
00:36You list every job you have ever held.
00:39You answer questions about drug use honestly because lying ends it.
00:44You click submit and you wait.
00:48Five months later, an email arrives in your inbox.
00:51They want you to come in for an interview.
00:53You drive to a regional office in a borrowed suit.
00:57The building looks like an insurance company from the outside.
01:00Inside, it is gray carpet and bad lighting.
01:04A panel of agents sits across a table from you.
01:07They ask why you want this job.
01:09You give the answer you rehearsed in the car.
01:12They do not look impressed.
01:15They ask what you would do if your partner broke the law.
01:18You stumble on that one.
01:20There is no good answer.
01:21They watch how you handle the silence.
01:25You learn that the silence was the test.
01:28Then come the tests that actually matter.
01:31You run a mile and a half against a stopwatch.
01:34You do push-ups and sit-ups until your arms shake.
01:37You take a written exam about judgment and ethics.
01:41You sit through a psychological evaluation that lasts hours.
01:53You answer carefully because every answer is being scored.
01:59Then comes the polygraph.
02:01They strap sensors to your chest, your fingers, your arm.
02:06A technician asks about drug use.
02:09He asks about lies on your application.
02:12He asks if you have ever sold narcotics.
02:15The machine watches your heart climb.
02:17You tell the truth because the fear of being caught is worse.
02:23Then comes the background investigation.
02:26Agents knock on your neighbor's doors.
02:28They call your old roommates and your ex-girlfriend.
02:31They ask if you ever did anything you should not have.
02:34They dig through your finances and your social media.
02:37They want to know if you can be trusted with secrets.
02:41Eight months after you applied, a letter arrives.
02:45You have been accepted to the DEA training academy.
02:48You read it three times to be sure.
02:51Then you call your mother and you tell her you got in.
02:56She is proud.
02:57She is terrified in the same breath.
03:00You hang up and you stare at the wall.
03:03Your old life is over.
03:05You can feel it ending.
03:07You do not sleep that night at all.
03:10You keep reading the letter on your phone screen.
03:13You wonder if you are tough enough for this.
03:16You decide it does not matter.
03:19You are going anyway.
03:21There is no turning back now.
03:23You are all in.
03:25Whatever it costs.
03:28Level 2.
03:29The Trainee.
03:30They send you to Quantico, Virginia.
03:32The DEA academy shares the base with the FBI and the Marines.
03:36For the next 18 weeks, this is your entire world.
03:40You wake before dawn and you run until you want to vomit.
03:44You learn that the job is mostly paperwork wrapped around moments of terror.
03:48You sit in classrooms studying federal drug law.
03:51You memorize the controlled substances schedules.
03:54You learn the difference between a state charge and a federal indictment.
03:58You learn how conspiracy law lets you charge a man for a phone call.
04:03You learn how a wiretap is approved and how it is run.
04:06You learn that the smallest mistake can throw out a whole case.
04:10Then they take you to the firing range.
04:13You shoot a pistol until it feels like part of your hand.
04:16You fire thousands of rounds over the weeks.
04:19You learn the rifle and the shotgun, too.
04:22You practice clearing rooms in a fake town built just for training.
04:26Instructors scream at you when your muzzle points the wrong way.
04:29You learn defensive tactics on a mat that smells like sweat.
04:33You get choked out and you learn to break the choke.
04:36You learn how to cuff a man who does not want to be cuffed.
04:40You study surveillance for weeks.
04:42You learn to follow a car without being seen.
04:45You learn that the hardest part of a tail is not losing it.
04:48You practice in the streets around the base.
04:51Instructors play the role of dealers and you play the role of agent.
04:54You blow it the first few times.
04:57They let you know about it.
04:59You learn how informants work.
05:01You learn that the whole agency runs on people who betray other people.
05:05A confidential informant is a criminal who trades information for leniency.
05:10He lies to you constantly.
05:12Your job is to figure out which parts are true.
05:15You learn to never fully trust the people who help you most.
05:18The washout rate is real.
05:20Some trainees fail the firearms qualification.
05:24Some fail the physical standards.
05:26Some quit because the reality is nothing like the movies.
05:30One man in your class breaks down during a stress drill.
05:33He is gone the next morning and nobody mentions him again.
05:36You graduate in the middle of your class.
05:39Not the top, not the bottom.
05:41They hand you a badge and credentials and a gun.
05:45You raise your right hand and you take the oath.
05:48You are now a DEA special agent.
05:50You call Sarah from the parking lot to tell her.
05:53She says she is proud and you can hear her smile.
05:57You have never felt anything like this.
05:59Then they read you your first assignment.
06:02You are headed across the country, a city you have never seen.
06:06You pack two bags and a lifetime of nerves.
06:09You leave the next morning.
06:11You do not look back.
06:13Level three, the special agent.
06:16Your first office is in a mid-sized city in the southwest.
06:19The supervisor shakes your hand and points you to a desk.
06:23The desk has a phone and a stack of old case files.
06:26You are the new guy.
06:28You get the work nobody else wants.
06:30You write reports for senior agents.
06:33You sit on surveillance for 12 hours and watch nothing happen.
06:36You photograph a house where a dealer might live.
06:40You log every car that comes and goes.
06:43You write down every plate.
06:45You note every face.
06:47You eat cold fast food in a parked sedan.
06:51Your back aches from sitting still.
06:53You drink coffee until your hands shake.
06:56Nothing happens for hours.
06:58Then everything happens at once.
07:01The radio crackles.
07:03The team moves.
07:04You hold your breath.
07:06Most days are boredom punctured by paperwork.
07:10You start to wonder if the movies lied to you.
07:12Then your first real case lands on your desk.
07:16A street-level dealer selling out of a gas station parking lot.
07:20You set up a controlled buy.
07:22An informant wears a wire and hands over marked bills.
07:25You sit in a van down the block, listening to it happen.
07:29Your heart pounds the whole time.
07:32The buy goes clean.
07:33You do it again the next week and the week after.
07:37You build the case one transaction at a time.
07:40You learn that drug work is slow and patient and dull.
07:44You also learn it can turn deadly in a single heartbeat.
07:48You follow the money and the money leads upward.
07:51The street dealer answers to a supplier.
07:54The supplier answers to someone above him.
07:57Everyone is a rung on a ladder you climb backwards.
08:01You make your first arrest six months in.
08:04You put a man in cuffs and read him his rights.
08:07He is younger than you expected.
08:09He cries in the back of the car.
08:11He says he has a baby daughter at home.
08:13He begs you to let him go.
08:16You cannot.
08:17You feel something you did not expect to feel.
08:20You push it down because the job leaves no room for it.
08:24You meet a woman that year at a friend's wedding.
08:27Her name is Sarah and she teaches third grade.
08:30She laughs at your bad jokes.
08:32You are done for.
08:34She asks what you do and you tell her a careful version.
08:38You do not tell her about the man crying in the back of the car.
08:41You take her to dinner the next weekend.
08:43You think for the first time about a life outside the job.
08:48The work does not slow down for any of it.
08:50You close your gas station case and the dealer takes a plea.
08:54He gets 18 months and you barely remember his face by then.
08:58You move on to the next target the same week.
09:02You are starting to understand the truth.
09:04The cases never stop coming.
09:06There is always another dealer.
09:09There is always another door.
09:11You learn to stop counting.
09:13You just keep working.
09:16Level 4.
09:17The Undercover Agent.
09:18Your supervisor pulls you aside one morning.
09:21He says you have a face that does not look like a cop.
09:24He means it as a compliment.
09:26They want you to go undercover.
09:28You go through a special course on the work.
09:31You learn how to build a cover identity that holds up.
09:34You learn how to talk like a buyer, not a seller.
09:37You learn that the fastest way to die is to seem too eager.
09:41You learn to memorize a backstory until it feels like memory.
09:45Your first deal is with a mid-level distributor.
09:47You walk into a warehouse with a duffel bag of cash.
09:50There are four men inside and all of them are armed.
09:53You are wearing a wire that could get you killed if they find it.
09:57You make small talk about cars and women and nothing.
10:00You count the money slowly.
10:02You keep your voice flat.
10:04You inspect the product like you have done this a hundred times.
10:07Your whole body wants to run for the door.
10:10You smile instead.
10:12The deal closes and you walk out alive.
10:15The takedown team moves in an hour later.
10:18You do this work for two years.
10:20You become someone else for weeks at a time.
10:23You grow a beard and you wear cheap jewelry.
10:25You learn the slang and the body language.
10:28You drink with men you are going to send to prison.
10:31You laugh at their jokes.
10:33Some of them you almost like.
10:35One of them shows you photos of his kids.
10:38You nod and you smile.
10:40You know where this ends for him.
10:42You shake his hand anyway.
10:44That is the part nobody warns you about.
10:46You start to lose track of which version of you is real.
10:50You marry Sarah during this stretch of your life.
10:52You tell her you are a federal agent and you leave it vague.
10:56She knows there are things you cannot say.
10:58She learns not to ask when you come home quiet.
11:01She learns the difference between your silences.
11:05One night, a deal goes wrong.
11:07A buyer recognizes a face from a previous bust.
11:10You feel the room change in an instant.
11:13A hand drifts toward a waistband.
11:15You talk your way out with a story you invent on the spot.
11:19You walk to your car slow and steady.
11:21You sit inside and your hands will not stop shaking.
11:25You know you cannot do this forever.
11:28You tell your supervisor you need out.
11:30He nods like he has heard it before.
11:32He tells you most agents only last a couple of years under.
11:36You look in the mirror that night and barely recognize the man with the beard.
11:40You shave it off the next morning.
11:42You want to be yourself again.
11:44You are not sure who that is anymore.
11:47The job blurred the line.
11:49It always does.
11:50You were warned at the academy.
11:52You did not believe it then.
11:55Level 5.
11:56The group supervisor.
11:57They pull you off undercover work before it breaks you.
12:00A promotion comes with it.
12:02You are now a group supervisor.
12:04You run a squad of 8 agents.
12:06You stop kicking down doors yourself.
12:09You make the decisions that send other men through those doors.
12:12That is a different kind of weight.
12:14You are responsible for the case and for their lives.
12:18You sit in the office reviewing affidavits late into the night.
12:22You decide which targets are worth the risk.
12:24You decide when an operation is too dangerous to run.
12:28You learn that saying no is harder than saying yes.
12:33Your group works a methamphetamine pipeline running up from the border.
12:37The case takes a year to build.
12:39You coordinate wiretaps and surveillance and informants.
12:43You sit in a monitoring room listening to phone calls in two languages.
12:47You learn the patience the job demands at this level.
12:50You learn to read a phone tap like a story unfolding.
12:54You hear them plan.
12:55You hear them lie.
12:57You hear them brag.
12:59You know their voices better than your own neighbors.
13:02Sarah gives birth to your daughter that spring.
13:05You name her Emma.
13:07You hold her in the hospital and you make a promise to yourself.
13:10You will not let this job swallow your whole life.
13:14You break that promise within a month.
13:17A case heats up and you disappear into it for weeks.
13:20You miss Emma's first steps because you are sitting in a parked car.
13:24Sarah does not yell.
13:26She just stops expecting you to be there.
13:29That hurts more than any argument.
13:32A cold quiet settles into the house.
13:36The takedown finally comes on a Tuesday morning.
13:39Forty agents hit six locations at once.
13:41You run the operation from a command post.
13:44You hear the radio traffic and you hold your breath.
13:47A door gets stuck and an agent is exposed for ten long seconds.
13:52He makes it inside.
13:54You start breathing again.
13:56Everyone comes home that night.
13:58You seize 200 pounds of meth and a million dollars in cash.
14:02The local news calls it a major victory.
14:05You go home and you hold your daughter and you do not sleep.
14:10You stare at the ceiling and you do the math on your career.
14:14You are good at this.
14:15Maybe too good.
14:16The agency notices people who close big cases.
14:21They start saying your name in rooms you are not in.
14:24A bigger job is coming.
14:26You want it and you fear it.
14:29The higher you climb, the further from the work.
14:33Nobody tells you that part.
14:35You learn it on your own.
14:37Like everything else here.
14:39Level six.
14:40The assistant special agent in charge.
14:43You are 40 years old now.
14:44The promotion moves you to a bigger office in a bigger city.
14:48You are an assistant special agent in charge.
14:51People call it the ASAC.
14:54You no longer run a single squad.
14:56You oversee several groups and dozens of agents.
14:59You are management now.
15:00You spend your days in meetings and on budgets.
15:03You answer to the special agent in charge above you.
15:06You answer to headquarters in Washington.
15:08You answer to prosecutors who want airtight cases.
15:11You miss the field more than you expected to.
15:14You sign off on operations you will never personally see.
15:17You read after-action reports instead of living them.
15:20You sit at a desk all day.
15:22You approve.
15:23You deny.
15:24You sign.
15:25The field feels very far away.
15:27You miss the fear, which surprises you.
15:30Your office handles a cartel distribution cell across three states.
15:34The case is enormous and tangled.
15:36It involves the FBI and Homeland Security and local police.
15:40You sit in interagency meetings where everyone guards their own turf.
15:44You learn the hardest battles are sometimes inside your own government.
15:48You manage the personalities and the egos.
15:50You keep the case moving when it threatens to fall apart.
15:53One of your agents is shot during a raid.
15:56He survives, but he loses the use of his arm.
15:59You sit at his hospital bed and you feel responsible.
16:02You sign the operations plan.
16:04You approve the entry.
16:05The bullet was not yours.
16:07The decision was.
16:08You write the report and the words feel hollow.
16:11You drive home that night and Emma is asleep.
16:14She is six now and she barely sees you awake.
16:17Sarah is awake on the couch waiting up.
16:19You sit beside her and you do not have the words.
16:22She holds your hand anyway.
16:24You realize she has been carrying this family alone for years.
16:28You promise to be home more and you both pretend to believe it.
16:31The next morning, a new case lands and the promise dissolves.
16:35You bury yourself in the work because the work is easier than home.
16:39The work asks clear questions with clear answers.
16:42Your family asks questions you cannot answer.
16:45Why are you never home?
16:47Why are you always tired?
16:48You have no good reply.
16:50So you say nothing.
16:52The silence answers for you.
16:54Level 7.
16:55The Special Agent in Charge
16:57They give you your own division.
16:59You are now the Special Agent in Charge of a field division.
17:03This is one of the most powerful jobs in federal law enforcement.
17:07You command hundreds of agents across a multi-state region.
17:11Every major case in your territory flows through you.
17:14You are the face of the agency for the local press.
17:17You stand at podiums announcing seizures and arrests.
17:21You testify before city councils about the overdose crisis.
17:25You shake hands with senators who want a photo with you.
17:28The politics never stop.
17:31Washington wants numbers.
17:32The mayors want fewer headlines about violence.
17:35The communities want the drugs gone yesterday.
17:39You balance all of it on no sleep.
17:42You watch the fentanyl wave hit your region.
17:44The overdose numbers climb every single month.
17:48You attend a briefing where the deaths are mapped on a screen.
17:51The red dots spread across the city like a rash.
17:54Each dot was a person.
17:56Each person had a name.
17:59Each person had a family.
18:01Now, they are just data on a screen.
18:05You used to know their faces.
18:06Now, there are too many.
18:08The number grows every quarter.
18:11You realize you are losing.
18:13The seizures get bigger and the deaths get worse anyway.
18:17The product is cheaper and deadlier than anything you chased as a young agent.
18:22You think about the street dealer who cried in your car years ago.
18:27He was nothing in the end.
18:28The system that made him just grew larger and meaner.
18:32You start sleeping four hours a night.
18:35You have not taken a real vacation in three years.
18:39Emma is 12 now.
18:40She asks you at dinner why you are always tired.
18:44You do not have a good answer for her.
18:46Sarah suggests counseling and you say you will think about it.
18:50You never do.
18:51You snap at people who do not deserve it.
18:54You apologize later.
18:56The damage is already done.
18:59You know the job is changing who you are.
19:01You look at photos of yourself from the academy.
19:04The young man in them looks like a stranger.
19:07He was hungry and certain and afraid of nothing.
19:11You are tired and uncertain and afraid of almost everything now.
19:16You wonder when that trade happened.
19:18You cannot find the day.
19:20It was a thousand small days.
19:22Each one cost a little.
19:24The bill came due slowly.
19:26You paid it without noticing.
19:29Level 8.
19:30The Country Attaché.
19:32The agency sends you overseas.
19:34You are the senior DEA officer in a country in Central America.
19:38You work out of the United States Embassy.
19:41Officially, you are a diplomat with a title.
19:44Unofficially, you are running the war on drugs at its source.
19:48This is where the cocaine starts its journey north.
19:51You coordinate with the local police and military.
19:54Some of them are honest and brave.
19:56Some of them work for the cartels you are fighting.
19:59You never know for certain which is which.
20:01You sit across from a police commander and wonder who he calls at night.
20:05You help build cases against organizations that move tons at a time.
20:09You work with vetted units the agency trusts.
20:12You watch a helicopter raid on a jungle lab through a screen.
20:16You see the chemicals and the barrels and the men running.
20:19You learn that the source is endless.
20:21You shut down one lab.
20:23Three more open the next month.
20:25The mountains are full of them.
20:27The corruption reaches into the highest offices in the capital.
20:30A government minister you shook hands with is indicted in absentia.
20:34You move your family into the embassy compound for safety.
20:37Sarah hates it.
20:38And Emma hates it more.
20:39Emma is 14.
20:40And she left her friends behind for this.
20:43She stops speaking to you for weeks at a time.
20:46You tell yourself it is temporary.
20:48You tell yourself the work matters more than comfort.
20:51You are not sure you believe either thing anymore.
20:53One night, a colleague at a partner agency is killed.
20:56He was investigating the same network you were.
20:59You attend a small ceremony and you say nothing.
21:02You think about how easily it could have been you.
21:04You picture your own funeral.
21:06You picture the folded flag.
21:08You picture Sarah accepting it.
21:10You think about Emma growing up without a father.
21:13You cannot stomach the thought.
21:15You call her that night.
21:17She does not pick up.
21:18You leave a message she may not hear.
21:20You say you are sorry.
21:22You are not sure she believes it.
21:24You request to transfer home the next week.
21:26You want your daughter back.
21:28You want your wife back.
21:30You are afraid it is already too late.
21:32The agency tells you to finish the tour first.
21:35You stay another eight months.
21:37And you count every one of them.
21:38A major trafficking case closes before you leave.
21:41The arrests make headlines back in Washington.
21:44Nobody mentions the three new routes.
21:46They opened while you celebrated.
21:49The river always finds a way down.
21:51You know that now.
21:52You knew it years ago.
21:54You just kept fighting.
21:57Level nine.
21:58The chief of operations.
21:59They bring you back to headquarters in Virginia.
22:02You are near the top of the entire agency now.
22:05You are a chief of operations.
22:07You oversee enforcement strategy across the whole country and beyond.
22:12Thousands of agents carry out plans that begin at your level.
22:15Billions of dollars in budget flow through decisions you help make.
22:19You brief the administrator.
22:21You brief officials at the Department of Justice.
22:23You sit in rooms where national drug policy is shaped.
22:26You testify before Congress in open session.
22:30The senators ask hard questions about why the crisis keeps getting worse.
22:35You give answers that are true but carefully framed.
22:39Everyone in the room knows the war is not being won.
22:42Nobody says it that plainly out loud.
22:46You authorize operations in countries most Americans could not find on a map.
22:50You coordinate with foreign governments and intelligence agencies.
22:54You sign off on programs that cost lives and save others.
22:58You sit at the table when a major target is finally captured.
23:01A cartel leader you hunted for a decade is taken in a foreign raid.
23:06The room erupts when the confirmation comes through.
23:10You feel a flicker of the old fire.
23:12Then you remember he will simply be replaced by morning.
23:16The machine does not stop for one arrest.
23:20You have spent your whole career fighting a tide that keeps rising.
23:24You are 52 years old.
23:26Your body remembers the early days.
23:29Your knees ache from years of training in raids.
23:32Your hearing is worse.
23:34Too many rounds at the range.
23:36Emma is grown now and away at college.
23:39She calls Sarah more than she calls you.
23:41You and Sarah are still married, but you live like polite roommates.
23:46You eat dinner together.
23:48You talk about the weather.
23:50You do not talk about the years.
23:53You wonder some nights what you traded for the badge.
23:56You traded your knees.
23:57You traded your hearing.
23:59You traded your marriage.
24:01Slowly, over years.
24:03You traded the man you used to be.
24:06You wonder if the country is any safer for your whole life.
24:11You ask the question in a quiet meeting one afternoon.
24:14The room goes silent.
24:16And then someone changes the subject.
24:18The answer is uncomfortable, so nobody wants to say it.
24:23You have given everything to a fight that may not be winnable.
24:27You are too far in to stop.
24:29You keep going.
24:31It is all you know how to do.
24:33The machine needs men like you.
24:36It always finds them.
24:37It always uses them up.
24:40Level 10.
24:42The Ghost
24:42You retire after 28 years.
24:45There is a ceremony in a conference room at headquarters.
24:47Old colleagues fill the chairs.
24:50Some of them you trained when they were brand new agents.
24:53The administrator gives a speech about your service.
24:55He talks about sacrifice and dedication and the safety of the nation.
25:00You receive a plaque, a flag, and a firm handshake.
25:03People applaud.
25:05A few of them mean it.
25:07Then it is over, and you walk out into the parking lot alone.
25:10You drive home through ordinary traffic.
25:13The badge that defined you for three decades is gone from your belt.
25:16You feel lighter.
25:18You feel emptier at the same time.
25:21You move to a quiet house outside the city.
25:23Sarah comes with you, though the marriage is more habit than romance now.
25:28You try to learn how to be a civilian again.
25:30It does not come naturally to you.
25:32You still scan every room you enter for the exits.
25:35You still watch the cars behind you on the highway.
25:38You wake at three in the morning out of an old reflex.
25:42The work followed you home.
25:43It never really left.
25:45You think about the men you put in prison.
25:48Some of them are free now, older, just like you.
25:51You think about the informant who lied and the one who died.
25:55You think about the young agent who lost his arm in a raid you approved.
25:59You carry all of it quietly because there is nowhere to set it down.
26:03The overdose numbers still climb in the news each year.
26:07You spent your whole life fighting a war that has no end.
26:10You are not sure the country is any safer for it.
26:13But you did the work.
26:15You believed in it.
26:16That has to be enough.
26:18Emma calls you on a Sunday afternoon and asks how you are doing.
26:22You tell her you are doing fine.
26:24It is half true, which is the most you can honestly offer.
26:27You ask about her life, and this time you actually listen.
26:31It is a small thing, but it is something.
26:34You hold on to it with both hands.
26:37Somewhere right now, a young man is filling out an application on the DEA website.
26:42He is dreaming of the badge and the gun and the chase.
26:45He is picturing the movies, the raids, the glory of it all.
26:50He has no idea what the job will quietly ask of him.
26:54He does not know about the boredom, the fear, or the cost.
26:58He does not know what it does to a marriage or a daughter.
27:01He will learn, the way you learned, one long year at a time.
27:06The cycle continues.
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