That person laying there dead and bleeding needs me to find justice for them. — Former FBI Agent Tim Clemente
In Episode 7 of The Hero Next Door, hosts Nick Searcy and Dr. Darcy Leutzinger sit down with Tim Clemente, a man whose career spans street-level policing, FBI counter-terrorism, undercover narcotics operations, SWAT leadership, espionage tradecraft, and Hollywood screenwriting. The conversation is direct, unflinching, and grounded in decades of frontline experience.
A Vocation, Not a Job
Tim Clemente wanted to be a police officer before he understood what the role entailed. His first-grade autobiography, three sentences long, ended with: “I want to be a police officer when I grow up.” His sister still has the report. There were no cops in his family. No defining childhood interaction with an officer. Just a calling he never questioned.
After graduating college in New York City, Clemente applied to both the NYPD and the FBI on the same day. The NYPD was in a hiring freeze. The FBI told him he was too young: minimum age 23, minimum three years of post-college work experience. He was 21 and had graduated the day before.
St. Louis: The Bloody Third
Clemente relocated to the Midwest and joined the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, one of the most violent jurisdictions in the country. He graduated first in his academy class and chose the Third District, known internally as “the Bloody Third,” the most dangerous beat in the city.
The violence was immediate. One Saturday: five homicides in his eight-square-block beat alone. Eleven that week. One victim was shot in the back of the head walking into a grocery store for no apparent reason. Minutes later, a woman shot inside her antique store. Then a triple homicide hours later. He never worked a week without a homicide. He was involved in at least half a dozen shootouts. His annual salary: $24,000, supporting a wife and five children.
Processing Violence: Mission Over Trauma
When asked how he processed the constant exposure to death, Clemente’s answer was direct: “That person laying there dead and bleeding needs me to find justice for them.” He did not experience post-traumatic stress from the violence. Each scene reinforced his purpose. “This is God presenting me with something I need to react to, respond to, investigate, and find justice for.”
Transition to the FBI
When the Bureau announced a hiring push of 1,000 agents, Clemente’s brother, already an FBI agent, encouraged him to apply. The starting academy salary of $49,000 was more than double his police pay. His wife’s response: “When do you start?”
At the FBI Academy, Clemente completed a skills assessment covering thousands of capabilities. His background in construction and finish carpentry, combined with his street-level interrogation experience, made him an unusual asset from day one.
Day One at the Bureau
Clemente’s first day placed him in a midnight hotel room with a former head of state from a foreign country, helping to flip the individual in connection with a drug cartel investigation. By Friday of that same week, he was blindfolded and driven to an undisclosed location for an active espionage case. The FBI had purchased a house 48 hours before the target’s closing date and needed finished carpenters to conceal surveillance equipment inside cabinetry and moldings. Clemente’s years in construction made him the right man for the job.
Undercover Against the Cartels
Assigned to an international narcotics squad, Clemente targeted the Cali cartel. He grew his hair into a ponytail, took a cooperator out of prison, and flew undercover to Caracas, Venezuela to meet a cartel leader at Carnival. Months later, he was flying around Medellín, Colombia in a covert DEA aircraft. The work was a world away from walking a beat, but the core skill was the same: building rapport with anyone, at any level, in any culture.
Counter-Terrorism and Global Deployment
In 1999, Clemente transitioned from narcotics to counter-terrorism as part of the FBI’s National Capital Response Squad, a rapid-deployment team created in response to Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against Americans. The squad maintained forward-deployed warehouses at Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany and operated on a four-hour leash from Andrews Air Force Base at all times.
Clemente deployed to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, the USS Cole bombing in Aden, Yemen in 2000, and an assassination investigation in Sarajevo, Bosnia. His squad was responsible for processing evidence and recovering the remains of 17 fallen sailors on the Cole.
September 11 and the Pentagon
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Clemente was a SWAT team leader training with SEAL Team 6 in Virginia Beach. After the first plane hit, his team packed up. After the Pentagon was struck, they diverted to Washington, D.C.
FBI agents were on scene within seven minutes. Agent Chris Combs established unified incident command and placed every responding agency on a single radio net. When FBI engineers determined that columns destabilized by the aircraft’s wings were about to fail, the evacuation order went out on one frequency to every entity simultaneously. Hundreds of personnel exited the building. Seconds later, the façade collapsed. No one was injured.
Clemente spent 65 days at the Pentagon. He did not go home for six weeks.
From Iraq to Hollywood
After retiring from the FBI, Clemente deployed to Iraq twice, working alongside elite special operations units targeting high-value individuals. In 2007, he spent nearly a year embedded with a military unit under the Department of Defense.
The transition to Hollywood came through a meeting with FBI Deputy Director John Miller, who asked if Clemente could develop a show that positively portrayed the Bureau. Clemente pitched stories from his squad to CBS. By the end of a single Friday afternoon, the president of CBS Studios said, “I want it.” He went on to write for and consult on The Unit, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.
On Maduro and the Western Hemisphere
The episode includes a discussion of the U.S. military operation against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Clemente, who spent years targeting the cartels the regime enabled, calls the operation “phenomenal” and argues that designating cartels as terrorist organizations should have happened decades ago. He connects the Venezuelan regime’s cooperation with Russia, China, Hezbollah, and Hamas to broader destabilization of the Western Hemisphere.
Looking Forward
Clemente’s closing message: the hope for the country lies in growing platforms like Proud American Studios so that more people are “exposed to reality and the truth.”
Watch the full episode on Proud American Studios.
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