On my way to meet Evy Poumpouras, 47, the elite agent turned self-help guru, frankly, I’m a little nervous. She sounds like the rudest person, let alone woman, I’ve ever met. A former US Secret Service agent who protected three sitting US presidents – Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama – also worked undercover posing as a sex trafficking victim and obtained confessions from abusers of children. I thought she was pretty tough, but she’s basically granite.
He speaks Greek, French, Italian and Spanish and learned Arabic to work in the Service’s elite polygraph unit, where he interrogated criminals, terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. He won the Secret Service’s highest honor, the Valor Award, for rescuing civilians from the rubble of 9/11. She says she can spot a liar simply by focusing on someone’s body language (telltale signs include twirling their hair, removing imaginary lint, and smoothing wrinkles out of clothing).
She’s also successfully made the transition from White House bodyguard to life coach, writing a self-help book, Becoming Bulletproof, that teaches softies to toughen up against everyone from colleagues to assassins. She also runs an online course on BBC Maestro, a paid subscription service where, for £120 a year, you can listen to anything from Trinny Woodall telling you about what she’s learned in the business world, to Isabel Allende on how to make the narration is magical or Brian Cox giving an acting master class.
I really want to impress Poumpouras. Another of his Secret Service maxims is:
“If you’re on time, you’re late.” Consequently, he arrived half an hour early at his London hotel. She flew from New York, where
She lives with her two-year-old daughter and her husband, recently retired agent Desmond O’Neill, 52. “That was very professional of you,” agrees Poumpouras, who is 5 feet 2 inches tall, with long blonde hair and angelic features.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Raised in a New York public housing project, the daughter of a Greek immigrant builder father and a hairdresser mother, her parents wanted her to follow a traditional path: doctor and lawyer. When he applied to the police academy “because he wanted a meaningful job,” they were horrified. While she was training (and living with them), they refused to talk to her, although later, when they were able to tell their friends that their daughter worked in the White House, they reached out. “I’m grateful I was firm enough not to give in to them.” She left the Service 12 years ago and is now a professor of criminology at the City University of New York. She is also a television pundit and appeared on NBC News in July to discuss the attempted assassination of Donald Trump by 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, who was shot and killed by officers.
So how can I be as bossy as Poumpouras? First, he emphasizes, control your emotions, just like the world leaders you saw make seismic decisions. ‘They never raised their voices, they listened and were rational. Tough people don’t overexpose their emotions. They say less. Some of the smartest and deadliest people I know are also the quietest.
On the contrary, some of these leaders’ entourages were extremely aggressive. At a G20 summit he had to stop a Chinese official from entering the room where Obama was speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “He tried to push me away and it turned into some kind of fight.” Which one won? ‘Yeah.’
At work, he advises: “Don’t try to be tough on the outside, flexing your muscles, so to speak, because that only shows insecurity.” If you are tough, internally you know who you are; You don’t need to wave that flag saying, “You have to respect me”; It’s about how you behave and that will emanate from you.”
What about personal safety? Recently, a clip went viral of actress Saoirse Ronan on Graham Norton’s TV show listening to her fellow male guests, Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington, snigger at Eddie Redmayne describing how she learned to use a phone to defend herself while getting ready. for his role. in Sky Atlantic’s Day of the Jackal. “That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” Ronan said, silencing the embarrassed men. Poumpouras nods approvingly.
Evy on guard protecting President Obama, 2012
‘Everything is a weapon. Your phone. A mug of beer. Women need any advantage they can find. He always carries a metal pencil in his pocket. “It’s very thin and can go directly into the throat and the eye.”
She won’t let her daughter stay over (“I’ve worked enough child abuse cases… the world is full of all kinds of people. And not all of them have the same moral compass as you.”) He also can’t stand people who identify as victims and claim that their lack of success is due to their race, gender, or class. (“If you are easily offended, you are easily manipulated.”)
Their advice is terrifying: never use public Wi-Fi (criminals could access your data); do not reveal your vacation plans to the taxi driver (they could notify the thieves or work as one); Have a ‘go bag’ to grab in case of emergency.
Being tough sounds exhausting. As an agent, Poumpouras worked up to 16 hours a day on “high alert,” knowing that if necessary, he would “take a bullet” for his bosses. How did you cope with the constant adrenaline?
‘Agents have a mentality of neutrality, since when you are emotional you don’t make good decisions. You don’t have high moments, so you don’t celebrate things too much, and you don’t have low moments, so you don’t plummet. That way, if something explodes, you don’t panic and say, “Okay, something exploded, how do I handle it?”
If you are attacked, his advice is: “Leave all your inhibitions and be wild.” Spider, fight, spider and then run. They may still win, but at least they’ll come back limping. If it is too late to flee, he advises: ‘Protect yourself. Think about how boxers always cover their faces. I’d rather get stabbed in the arm than in the face. If you’re lying on the floor, use your thigh.’ Ideally, we would all practice a sport like boxing or, in the case of Poumpouras, Brazilian jiu-jitsu. ‘The first time you are hit should never be on the street, where someone is trying to hurt you. If you’re used to being hit, you’ll be able to think better if it happens unexpectedly.’
I leave Poumpouras promising to sign me up for boxing classes and buy me a sharpened pencil. Above all, I’ve followed his last advice: scare myself more.
BULLETPROOF BASICS
If you’re on time, you’re late.
When I say I’ll be there at nine, I’m there at 8:55.
Carry a metal pencil.
I would use it to stab an attacker’s throat or eye.
No sleepovers for kids
I have worked on too many abuse cases to leave my son with a stranger.
Don’t make small talk with taxi drivers
They could tell thieves about my empty house.
Never use public wifi
I will not risk cybercriminals discovering my personal data.