Episode 31 – July 22 Norway Terrorist Attacks – Delta Norge Response

Jon Becker: On July 22nd, 2011, Norway experienced two terrorist attacks, a bombing at a government building in Oslo and a mass shooter event at a youth camp on nearby Utoya island. These were perpetrated by a lone right wing extremist. These attacks were unprecedented for the peaceful country of Norway and stretched the Norwegian first responders to their limits.

My guest today is an active member of Norway's most elite tactical and counterterrorism police unit, Berridge Skapstruppen, also known by its call sign Delta, and internationally as Delta Norris. Because of the nature of his current assignment and the nature of their work, it is critical that we maintain his anonymity.

As a result, we will not be showing his face on video or using his real name. Additionally, because these events resulted in the death of 77 people, most of whom were children, and the injury of more than 300 others will not be glorifying the attacker by using his name. It is our hope that the memory of the attacker will be forgotten, but the memory of his innocent victims will not.

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Hey, thanks so much for being here with me today!

I really appreciate you coming out and spending the time with me!

Guest: Thanks for having me on your podcast! I'm really grateful for being there!

Jon Becker: So why don't we start with. Because we have kind of an international audience in Norway. For context, Norway is about the population of the city of Los Angeles, about the size of the state of New Mexico, stretched in a long line. Biggest city being Oslo is roughly the size of Las Vegas. So help me understand the structure of Norwegian policing.

Guest: Yeah, we have several police districts. So at the moment, we have twelve different police districts, which each have their own chief of police, and they're more or less the same structure. So you got the police chief on the top, and then with the different policing sections underneath.

So, for instance, in Oslo, where my unit is located, you have the normal police, just kind of like the patrolling police officer that you see out in the street in the police car, and then you have something that is kind of like a SWAT team. It's like a more tactical, more trained police. And then you have my unit, which is like the HRT or counterterrorist unit. So that's pretty much it.

Jon Becker: And the unit is at the national police level?

Guest: That's correct, yeah. So we have a compound which consists of other different national units, and we're on call for the whole country. So if the police chief in the northern police district needs help with a mission, he will call, and then his call will be approved, and then we will set off to assist that police district.

Jon Becker: So is the – Are the police districts still national level police?

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Or are they individual organizations? So the whole thing is national police. It's just split up into twelve different districts.

Guest: Yeah, so. That's correct. And. And you have something called the police directorate, which is kind of like a supervising level of the police, which is in charge of the national policing, more or less. It's close attachment to the politicians and justice department, and they have different sections, so they cooperate with the different kind of police districts in order to how the policing in Norway will be conducted in.

Jon Becker: So your unit starts in 76, I'm assuming. It probably has its roots in Munich, like every other counterterrorism unit in the world.

Guest: Yeah, that's correct. It was a Munich incident and spurred the start of the unit. And it was going under a different name up until 76 or 75, I think. And then officially it changed name to be in 1976.

Jon Becker: And talk to me about the unit, like, how big, what's the mission set?

Guest: Yeah. At the moment, our unit is approximately 120 to 150 people altogether. The exact number of the operators are. It's like a secret thing, so we won't disclose that. But we have grown throughout the years and we are four different divisions, so we. Which have a team, like two teams on each. Division. So there's eight teams altogether. And on each division you have more or less all the specialties that we have on the teams.

So you have specialty teams divided into all of the four divisions. At the time of 22nd July, we had a different structure in my unit, where you had two special teams altogether, which made out one division. So we have swap. Yeah. So we mixed up the teams. So every team now is like a multifaceted assault team. Would you like.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, so breaching capability, maritime capability. CQB capability.

Guest: Rope entry, everything and sniping. So all of those capabilities are on one team or each team now of those eight teams?

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think it's difficult, I think, for a lot of people, maybe in the northern part of Canada, but it's difficult for people to understand how much the environment can be a participant in your operations. You have a very angry ocean, you have periods of very long periods of darkness and strong weather and cold temperatures.

So I'm going to guess there's a pretty significant maritime capability to the unit and pretty significant nordic capability to the unit.

Guest: Yeah, that's definitely true. And it's all depending on what time of year it is. Late autumn and winter. First part of the winter is definitely the hardest, hardest time of the year to move around. In Norway. A lot of the mountain passes, they close up during the wintertime. That can happen within just half an hour time. And when it does that, obviously you can't fly helicopter, and you also experience sometimes difficulties taking off and landing the airplanes on the commercial routes going here in Norway.

And like you said, we have a huge. There's a small country, small, long, thin country, but we have a lot of coastline and there's a lot of small islands and communities living on all scattered along that coastline, all the way from the south, all the way up to the north.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I was surprised in doing my homework, I was surprised about more than 70% of Norway is just uninhabited.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: It's just barren tundra, basically.

Guest: And the further north you go into the country, then the less roads you have as well. So you're more or less confined to one specific driving road..

Jon Becker: Which makes – Definitely makes it a real problem.

Guest: Yeah, it makes it a real problem. And sometimes the distance isn't that far, but you need to drive all the way around a big lake, for instance, because you don't have any bridge across it. And it's the same thing with the mountains. Not every mountain has a tunnel through it. So, like you said, logistics becomes challenging at times.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Which is going to be relevant to today's discussion, for sure.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: 22nd July 2011. How's your day start?

Guest: Well, for me and my units, or my team, then we started out pretty much as we did every day back then, I was working the day shift, so we just met at work, sat around the sofa, had a coffee and planned the day. And what we do is more or less, in the morning we do the physical training, so we did that. And then we had planned to do tactical training all throughout the rest of the day. And, like coincidence with habit, that day we were training for exactly the mission that happened, more or less at Utoya, where you had small terrorist units attacking soft targets.

Yeah. So we were doing that and just having a good day, had a nice, really good training. And then afterwards, my team, we were planning on going climbing in an indoor climbing center. So we did that when we were let off at work at 03:00 p.m. in the afternoon. So, yeah, and we hadn't been climbing at the center for very long because all of a sudden all the phones rang and we were on call that week as well.

So it's never a good sign when all the phones calls at the same time when you're together. So we knew that something had happened and that we were probably gonna have to drive into work. So, yeah, so I was just quickly let down from the wall and took my phone. And the guy from my unit that called, he just said, you need to get to work really quick. A bomb has gone off in Oslo.

So I told the rest of my guys in my team, because I was team leader at the time, what had happened and what the call had been. And we just held up all the gear and went to the wardrobe to get our stuff. And the phone called a second time. And then same guy, he said, well, you definitely need to hurry up. A second bomb has gone off.

So then we were like, two bombs going off and we were already on the first call. We were like, well, this isn't an accident. There's a terrorist attack. So we're just already planning ahead in our head and getting ready for. Bob was waiting for us. And when we had gotten our shoes on and we were about to leave the climbing center, the phone rang for the third time. And it was basically the same message that another bomb.

So the third bomb had gone off in Oslo. So that was our start of the afternoon. So we just drove off from the climbing center really quick and back to our job and went inside, geared up and just went straight ahead out, drove off and then over to the place where the bomb had gone off and started working there.

Jon Becker: So let's talk about the bomb, and we'll kind of talk about, you know, we have a standard practice of never mentioning the suspect's name, so we'll just call him the suspect. Yeah, I have a variety of other adjectives that I could use, but we'll avoid those. Yeah, so this.

Guest: Exactly.

Jon Becker: At least try. So the suspect. Talk to me about the bomb. Where was it placed, how big? All that?

Guest: Yeah, you asked me about my day and I. I told you about it. So from his perspective, his day started way differently than ours. So his bomb was placed inside. I think it was a volkswagen crafter. So that's kind of like a big van. And it was an anfo bomb. I think it was about 950 AMFO that he had put inside there.

Jon Becker: So he drove off close to a ton of AMFO.

Guest: Yeah, a big bomb. Yeah. And he drove that one off and he parked it outside. There's a. There's more or less a block which consists of governmental buildings there at the time. And he parked. He drove it right up to the main entrance of the high building where the prime minister office is at the top floor, and went back, lighted the fuse because he had a fuse to the bomb and walked off from the car.

So I think according to the timeline that was drawn up afterwards, that one happened about a 03:15..

Jon Becker: So quarter pastor. What day was it?

Guest: It was on a Friday. So it was just a typical summer vacation had kicked in in all of Norway. And it was like, it was a slow Friday and the weather was bad, it was gray. It had rained a lot, which was kind of, like, fortunate given that there wasn't that many people out in the city. So, yeah, like I said, the most Norway during the summertime and the vacation time is. Yeah, there's not much going on. So there weren't that many employees inside the high building, which was fortunate as well.

So, yeah, like I said, a 03:15 p.m. and after we had gotten the call from the climbing center, one of the guys, he had ridden his bike to the climbing center from his home, and he said that he thought he had heard thunder on his way because of the rain. But he realized afterwards that he probably heard the detonation of the banda.

Jon Becker: Oh, wow!

Guest: Yeah. Because it made….

Jon Becker: How far away for you, how far away from the site were you guys?

Guest: We were indoor as well, but we were about, I would guess more or less like 2 little less.

Jon Becker: That's a long way for that sound to go.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of buildings in between, so the sound would have been distorted anyway. So, yeah.

Jon Becker: So he lights the fuse. It's a mechanical fuse. It's an actual burning fuse that he lights.

Guest: Yeah, I think it was a black powder fuse that he used. Interesting. Yeah, it is kind of interesting. And of course, he had been working on that bomb for a long time, which the investigation disclosed afterwards.

Jon Becker: Yeah, this guy had been planning this event for a really long time. Right. And had done a great deal of research and homework.

Guest: Definitely. And I think shortly, about an hour before he parked the cardinal, he published his manifesto online as well. And then he drove off. He had a second car parked nearby, which he also placed out in advance.

So after having parked his crafter with the bomb inside. He walked off from that one and to his second car, got inside and then drove off to – what. We didn't know, at least at the time, though, what was to be his second attack, which was Utoya. So he left Oslo about the time when the bomb went off.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So he sets the bomb and leaves.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And moves on to the second step of his path. Now there was – Was there – Did it end up that there was only one device in Oslo? Because I know you got reports of multiple bombs.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: But was it a single device, right.

Guest: It was a single device and we learned that afterwards. But because of all the damages because of the blast wave in downtown, people had heard the sound ricocheting and there were several. Several buildings that got shooken up during the blast. So I think it's just one of those things when. When things become that chaotic. You know, people calls in from the place, they experience whatever happens. And you can't really. It's a hard puzzle to sort out at the time that it's all connected.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You see it in every. Every incident we debrief, you know, a single shooter is always reported as three or four shooters. A single bomb is reported as multiple devices. Yeah, I think it's just people, you know, people have different perceptions and they see things and, you know, you get multiple reports and the reports give different information. And that noise is always problematic in all of these events.

Guest: Yeah, it's like you said, it's problematic at an early stage, definitely. And I think it's really hard to sort out as well. I mean, if you were to analyze it and put it together, it would require a lot of manpower, I think, or some sort of computer. I don't know.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you have to have some kind of intel center that could confuse the data. Even then, what you're getting is not that accurate.

Guest: No, it's not. It's chaos just coming through like a pipeline to the police. So, yeah, that was it. So I get told when we arrived, we knew. We got to know where the bomb island had gone off and we packed gear, so we took our assault, like tactical assault gear, and we also packed for my team, we packed climbing gear, rescue gear, like, for any kind of use, our urban search and rescuer, because we were expecting collapsing buildings and holes in all sorts of situations. And then we just drove to the place.

And I remember driving there, you could see like big heaps of glass in the streets. So it was difficult getting from the outside area and into the last site because of all the glass. And we were thinking, we don't want to drive over the glass because it's going to create punctures and the car will more or less be useless. But we couldn't find a clean route in, so eventually we just had to risk it and drive off and drive through the street that we thought had the least amount of glass in it.

And then eventually we came close enough and unloaded from the car and ran off and had a quick briefing with my assault leader at the time, and then he was together with the on scene commander, because at that time there were already a lot of police and civilians in the area and first responders unit. And the fire, it was next to the main fire station in Oslo as well. So they responded.

And getting there, I can remember there were all sorts of sirens going off and visually arriving there. There were, I don't know, several hundreds, maybe thousands of documents flying through the air, burning. There was smoke, fire, distorted, all sorts of distorted materials thrown around.

It was a huge car wreck lying in a fountain a bit far, and you could see just a huge crater. Weather car had stood and the whole building and the main entrance was unrecognizable to us. And it was a really hard time finding the way in to the building. There were a small team from us that had already been inside the building. Like I said, there weren't that many people in the building.

So when we were going in, the plan was just to quickly search through it roughly after survivors. We weren't expecting any attackers inside because of the damages and because of the normal mo, but we couldn't be 100% sure. So we were all on alert for that one as well.

And yeah, it was difficult moving on from the ground floor and up to the middle floor of the building simply because of all the collapsed building materials. There were holes in the floors. I remember the elevator shaft were just completely knocked inside. There were windows knocked inside, doors thrown around, electrical wires hanging from the ceiling, making sparks, water pipes throwing water in. So complete chaos. And you just had to scramble through every hallway, every room of the building, searching for any survivors or traces of survivors inside.

So we did that for a while, went from the bottom all the way to the top, and we didn't find any. My team didn't find any because at the time they had already been evacuated from the building. So, yeah, I can remember going inside. We were definitely running across someone at the time. They were just. You could see that there were human remainings on the street there. So we knew immediately that there were probably several. You expected to see several dead and injured inside the building. But we didn't.

Jon Becker: And it was what? Eight people? Nine people were killed with the initial blast and a couple hundred injured. Is that?

Guest: Yeah, that's true. Only eight people killed in the blast. And then there were several people nearby being injured from shrapnel and the blast wave and glass falling glass into the streets.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you guys search the building?

Guest: Yep.

Jon Becker: Obviously, you know, every first responder in Oslo and probably the surrounding areas is descending on the problem. The suspect, in the meantime, has snuck out in his other car and driven away.Guest:

Yeah. So he's on his way to Utrea. So I think on the normal condition, that's about what would it be a good hour drive from Oslo under normal conditions. But it was in the afternoon and I think there were actually a car accident that had happened on the way out from Oslo, which slowed him down a bit. So he was stuck in traffic for a while. But eventually he arrived Utah with his second car. And then his plans for attacking the youth camp that was going on there.

Jon Becker: So let's kind of set that up. So everybody, every police, fire, medical resource available is descending on Oslo. The meantime, the suspect is heading an hour, you know, out of town to the island. Now the island is how far off the coast?

Guest: It's actually based in inland. So it's on Fjord island. It's based inside a Fjord.

Jon Becker: Oh, really? Okay.

Guest: Like a huge lake. Yeah. So. And it's fresh water, obviously.

Jon Becker: So it's how far off the shore is. You know, what's the boat transit time?

Guest: I think the shortest line to shore is where the local ferry is coming and going. And that's approximately 600 meters. It's not that far.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah. So it's relatively close, which will make other things make sense in a minute.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So. Okay, so the island is. Is a summer camp that is occupied, if I remember correctly, by kids from one from the political party that he opposes. Like political leaders. Kids, right?

Guest: Yeah, that's more or less true. They have, they have. It was the youth Labor Party. So they have this summer camp every summer on that island. And they had had it for quite a few years. So it's more. It's a traditional event happening every summer. And it's like you said, it's a political camp. So they do debating and all sorts of political stuff there. And then they have concerts and obviously more like youth related activities as well.

Jon Becker: And how many kids are on the island? Like, give me. Give me some sense of the size of the island, how many kids?

Guest: It was more than, I think it was around 550, 560. So just below 600 persons of the gather on the island on that day.

Jon Becker: And these are primarily teenagers, right? 13 to 19 or 20?

Guest: Yeah, there's. Yeah, well, at the time I didn't know this. I knew that the event was going on, but I didn't know exactly what dates and what time of summer. But there was a small staff of adults there, sure, as well. But for the most there's young adults and teenagers, so.

Jon Becker: Yeah, got it. So the suspect, while everybody's tied up, the suspect goes over to catch the ferry out to the island.

Guest: Yeah. Because there's – Then there was a local and there still is a local ferry leaving or driving from the land side over to the island on the fjord, which is the ferry. His name is Ms. Torbjorn. So he drove his car down there. And then ever since Oslo, he was wearing a fake police uniform which he had made on his own. And he also wore fake police credentials hanging from his neck.

And that was a piece of information that we were actually given from the on scene commander when we came out from the building after searching there. But yeah, so he, he arrived the ferry and said that he's a police officer and he used the incident in Oslo to talk his way and said that he needed to go to Utoya.

And I don't remember exactly his words, but he was tricking his way. And the guy that drove, the captain that drove the ferry, he had no reasons to not believe the guy, obviously. And he drove him over from the land side and to, with his car, and inside his car he had all sorts of stuff and supplies for his attack.

Jon Becker: Oh, so he put his car onto a ferry.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Oh, okay. I'd always gotten the impression he walked on the ferry. So he takes his car, drives onto the ferry and then the ferry takes him out to Otoya.

Guest: Yeah, that's true. So as soon as he arrived, and this is his words afterwards. We didn't know that at the time, obviously. But as soon as he arrives there, he obviously has plans to conduct his attack there as soon as possible. But he is met by One of the adults, which is a female, so she was called Mother Eutoya because she was always there for the youth camp.

And then another, actually a civilian policeman, he was off duty, but he was working there as security. So they met him because the captain that drove the ferry, he talks to and comes to them and they arrived.

And what the perpetrator has said afterwards, during the trial is that he was afraid that he was being made by the police officer because he started asking, I guess you would call them, confronting questions because the outfit that the suspect had made wouldn't fool any police officer. He had his black spandex shirt, so he did his best to copy and imitate Norwegian, like a standard Norwegian police uniform.

Jon Becker: But it was. But a real police officer immediately would recognize that it was not a real cop.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And just for context, I kind of forgot to pull this up front. But Norwegian police don't normally carry guns during the day. Right. Like the street police are not. They're not armed, if I remember correctly, they have weapons, but the weapons are secured.

Guest: Yeah, that's true. We only carry arms under special conditions. So we will need to have a permission. Or we could also arm ourselves if we find that necessary, given the mission that we're on, if we don't have time to get the formal permission.

Jon Becker: But this is not. You're not. You're not wearing a holster with a gun in it. You're physically going and taking a gun out of a locked case.

Guest: Yeah. Inside the police car. So if you leave them, the further away from the police car you are, the further away from your weapon you are.

Jon Becker: And as a result, I'm also assuming that no Norwegian police are carrying guns off duty.

Guest: No, that's true. We're not.

Jon Becker: So this police officer, although it's a police officer on the island, he's unarmed.

Guest: Yeah, he's on what we call private overtime. So he's being paid by. I wouldn't know for sure, but I guess the organization. And then he's there. Assets, a will in person, first and foremost. Not as an formal police officer at the time. I understand if that becomes confusing, but. Yeah, but that was. That was kind of like the arrangement that he had. So he didn't. He wasn't there wearing a police uniform. He wasn't there wearing any kind of tactical police care and no weapons within reach. So that's pretty much summed up.

Jon Becker: Got it. So they start to engage the suspect, ask questions. The suspect thinks he's mad. What does he do next?

Guest: Yeah, what he does is, like I said, he starts getting nervous. And then I think what he said is he pulled up his. Because obviously he was armed and he pulled his pistol and then he shot both of them in the head. And then that started off the attack.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So he executes the two adults and now the kids. As far as the actual island goes, the kids are. They're kind of scattered all over the island. Right. It's kind of like different bunk houses or boarding.

Guest: Yeah. So it's not a big island, and it's like a roundly shaped island and more like a. Yeah, I would guess kind of like a not so round pancake information. So there were different pineal areas on the island that the kids were doing, I think, at the time. Some of them were up in. There's a cafe building, which is.

So there's a small knoll coming from the dockside of the island, which is east side. And then immediately you step up and there's a lawn, and then you have a white main building, which. Where the two adults were executed. And then behind that main building, there's a hill, and on top of that hill, you got a cafe building.

And then all the way, almost on the northern tip, you have something that they call the pump house, which is, I guess, a water pump house or a water supply on the island. And then if you go continue to the south, you will have a red cottage based in an open area. And there were tents nearby that cottage as well, set up by something which is a volunteer organization that they help out doing search and rescue missions in Norway and doing first aid. So they had kind of like a first aid station there set up next to that red cottage. And that cottage they were calling that one school building.

And then that's pretty much the buildings. And then you have like a grassy hill with a scene at the bottom, which were there, and debating area and concert area. So at the time, the kids would be on those places?

Jon Becker: Yes, the kids are kind of scattered all over the island.

Guest: Yeah, they're definitely scattered all over the island at the time. And there's also. Yeah, there's a huge tent area where they had pitch all their tents as well. And there's a huge building behind that one as well. So I think it was. Yeah, I don't remember exactly how many buildings there are, but there's definitely four big buildings and then lots of tents on the area at the time. So they were just all around those places.

Jon Becker: And the island, like, just to give me some sense of. What do you think the size of the island is? Like? What do you think the diameter across it is?

Guest: That's just going to be a. I wouldn't even call it a qualified guess, maybe. But if. If I were to guess, it's no more than maybe 500 meters across. So that would be half a kilometers maybe, across in. If you take the cardinal direction, like north to southeast and east to west. That would be my best estimate, yeah.

Jon Becker: So the whole area is only a couple of square kilometers, you know, so it's small and compact.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay. So he executes the two adults, and then what does he do?

Guest: Well, he just gets on and with his attack, and he is armed with a pistol. I think that one was a glock, actually. And then he has a Ruger semi automatic rifle with plenty of rounds. So he just starts walking around seeking up the people on the island. And I don't. I don't remember afterwards exactly where he met the first group of people. But eventually what the kids had told afterwards done was that they heard something making sound, but they thought it was fireworks going off. So that would be the shooting initially.

And then someone runs and says that there's someone walking around in police uniform shooting and killing people. And then obviously, you had a full blown panic spreading out through all the kids at the time.

So his plan was basically just to hunt down whoever was on the island and kill them. And he also had with him in his car, he had different kind of stuff to ignite the buildings on the island as well, to smoke whoever was inside out and then shoot them when they were coming out from the building. That was more or less his plan in bullet points.

So when he started his attack, my unit is still back in Oslo, finishing up the search and rescue inside the buildings and the bomb site there. And like I mentioned earlier, coming up from the building, the on scene commander, I remember that he was on the call when I arrived there to give my brief strap, and he just hung up.

And then he said that he just was told that someone had seen a police officer walking off from the bomb site before the bomb went off. And he was wearing a bulletproof helmet with a visor down and walking with the pistol in his hand. And that is just really strange because it wasn't.

There weren't any missions ongoing in the area at the time where any police officers would behave that way. So that was just like a strange piece of information that got stuck in my head. And then we went back to our car and started preparing for what we really believed were to be the next second wave of attack air. So we were just quickly going through our head at this time on a Friday, where you have a lot of people, obviously, shopping centers, the airport. Airport. And, yeah, that was it. So we were just getting ready and talking through whatever comes next, you know, to be prepared.

And then initially, we had the initial call, which actually was happening through another police officer, he was inside the police chief's staff in Oslo working there along with our unit leader. And his daughter was actually on the island and she was calling her dad inside of the police chief staff, telling him that someone is on the island walking around shooting people and asking for help.

So that was immediately relayed to our units and we were basically just eventually told to drive off. And then some were still held back in Oslo just in case something else was popping up on the radar. So we just said, yeah.

Jon Becker: The first notification you guys get is actually a police officer's daughter on the island.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Calls to say there's an active shooter on the island.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: That has got to be horrific for him.

Guest: Yeah, definitely. That's something I've been thinking about afterwards. I mean, it has to be. Has to be the worst kind of call to get as a parent.

Jon Becker: Do you know if she ends up surviving?

Guest: She ends up surviving, yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay, good. Yeah, so, okay, so he has, from the time that you guys clear the building, you're freed up, basically starting to prepare, thinking through if this is a multi site attack, where the next one can happen.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: How long? So bomb went off at 03:15, 30:50?

Guest: Yep, about 03:50.

Jon Becker: Okay, so then how long after what time does he land on the island and execute the two adults?

Guest: I think that is – it's slightly past 05:00 p.m. that he's arriving island.

Jon Becker: Okay. And so he gets there. And, I mean, as far as the response time goes, the response time starts when I. Police officer's daughter calls her dad.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Which is presumably, you know, 05:15 or, you know, ten after five or something like that, when he has already begun to hunt kids on the island because he's basically just walking around the Highland hunting children.

Guest: Yeah, that is true. I think it was. I can't remember exactly. I think it was. It was a bit later than like, 05:15 p.m. that we got the initial call. And then eventually that initial call would be reinforced by several calls to that specific police district where Utah is located. Because there's no. At the time, there weren't any national call center. Each police district had it on as it owns own central, where the calls get in, like the 911 calls get in.

So, yeah, we got that one. And we deployed more or less immediately afterwards, like I said. So we arrived, I think it was about 05:30 p.m. that we were deployed and drove off from Oslo. And like I said, it was raining, so it's super slippery. And we were more or less just driving whatever the cars could take and still staying on the roads, not driving off. And I think we arrived like a couple of minutes past four. We were arriving at pre decision meeting area for us on the local police.

Jon Becker: You said a couple of minutes past four. You mean a couple of minutes past six.

Guest: Yeah, sorry, six, yeah. So that would be it.

Jon Becker: So at that point, has anybody else gone onto the island? Are you guys the first responders to this thing?

Guest: Yeah, I think initially there were two police officers from the local police district. They deployed and they arrived shortly before 06:00 but they couldn't get to the island and so they were just stuck on the land side. And the police district, they also had a boat, which they started to launch because it wasn't already on the water. They had to put it up on the water and then they had to drive it from the setup point to the pickup point where we had planned to meet them.

So all of that was going on as we were driving from Oslo, and we had communications off and on with the police district. There was one guy in my unit, he called the – What would you call it? The police central in the district where all the calls come in, trying to get information through, because we had difficulties with the comms, obviously, and we also asked for a helicopter, but there was a huge local fog bank, which made the flying difficulty because the choppers don't have any instruments that could help them see through the fog. And there's cables going across the fjord there as well. So it's really sketchy area to fly.

Jon Becker: Helicopters at that point. The helicopter. You guys do not have air assets at that point. Right?

Guest: And back then. No, that's true. So we were relying on army helicopters, which we were having an agreement with them that they could assist us on missions. So we would need to call and ask for their helicopters to come and assist us, which we did.

So initially, the plan was to link up with that helicopter on top, driving over the hill from Oslo to the local police district where Utoya is placed. But they weren't able to take off and land because of the fog. And, well.

Jon Becker: You guys basically drive to the harbor. Is it like a harbor that's across from the island or what is.

Guest: Yeah, there's where we actually met the local police. That's a place called Stura. Yeah. Translated, it will mean the big island, which is. There's a pier on the land side there, so there's lots of leisure boats, and then you have a bridge going up over to the island and stood there. But I think that's about 2 km off north from Utaya. So from that place to there's a boat drive, which is more than 600 meters because there was chaos.

And I remember eventually, when we started getting closer, obviously, there's lots of stuff going on inside the car there where we plan ahead, we are given seat reps on the way. So the initial report is several perpetrators dressed as police officers walking around on the island and killing people with automatic rifles and firearms. And then from that initial message, you know, that it just grows in details.

So by the time you actually meet up with the local police, kind of like the final situation awareness of the whole mission is that you have five or four to five at a time, perpetrators armed with automatic rifles, firearms. There's IADs placed out in the trees on the island. So it's starting to get to the same kind of scenario that we trained on earlier that day. So we have an instant recognition of the mission and know what to do.

Yeah, so, no, no. Also at the time, there were no information at the time which were stating that there were only one solo attacker, non information whatsoever, because all the calls that came to the police were saying several attackers with police uniforms and automatic rifles.

Jon Becker: It's amazing how much that happens. You know, I mean, it's extremely unusual to have an active shooter with more than one perpetrator. Like, extremely unusual. It's kind of columbine. Yeah. You know, and so it's. But, but yet it seems in every single one of these things. Yeah, the reports are multiple perpetrators.

Guest: Yeah. And I can get to that later, but I, you know, it's, – that's part of the job. You get an initial message and for the most of the time, you don't have either the time or the tools to kind of, like, dive into the message and dissect it and go through the information and like, well, this is true. This isn't true. So you have what you have until you arrive the scene, and then you start making your own assessments of the situation. And then you kind of hold that up to your initial message. And then eventually a more. What do you say? That a more precise take on the situation starts happening.

But obviously, there's heaps of information that you don't have at the time. And we knew at the time, I guess I was a team leader, so I was in charge of the team. But you know that if you wait, taking your decision, if you wait for three, four minutes, you will most likely have more information, but you don't have that luxury. So you have to make real time decisions on the information that you have all the time, and then you have to plan and like, analyze it.

Okay, what does it mean? Where can they take the mission? So you can project it into three, maybe two, three, four different kind of mission, futures or scenarios that can come from the information that you have.

Jon Becker: That's a really interesting point though, because you want to make the right decision. And certainly there's a feeling that the more information you have, the more accurate your decision will be. But that is competing with the fact that while you are waiting to make a decision, children are being killed.

Guest: Exactly. So that's it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you have this pressure in both directions to not make an error, but at the same time you have to make a decision right now. Yeah, I think that's one of the more difficult aspects of all these scenarios, is this kind of competing pressure of you have to act right now, you've got to do something right now, but you don't have enough information to make a good decision. And you know that if you wait just a few minutes, you may have more information.

Guest: Yeah, that is so true. But at the same time, at least the way that we train at the time and train now is just like you said, you know, it's – There's really no point in waiting for that information because first of all, you might not get it, so that wasted time. And second, all you have what you have and you have the training you have, and you have whatever intuition you have of the mission. And that's what you base your decision making on at the time.

And then you adjust it to whatever information comes from your may decision. And then you form your decision if you get the second information. So yeah, so you have to start somewhere. And like you said, with this mission, it is pretty simple.

I mean, the plan is pretty simple. You have to stop the killing. You can only do that by arriving on the island and facing the perpetrators, which is, you know, it's that simple. What becomes complicated is the logistics of the part because we knew that we would need boats, which we didn't bring with us because our boats are too big and we don't really, within that time, having a really good system to bring them along with us. And also that would have taken way time as well.

So we depend on some local resources as well. So we need to cooperate with the local police districts, solve those kind of missions. So, yeah, so we were doing our stuff from our side driving and linking up with the police and they were doing whatever they could on their side to accommodate us and cooperate with us in solving the mission as quick and seamlessly as possible. Really?

Jon Becker: That had to be the longest hour of your life.

Guest: Yeah, actually, it took less than an hour driving from also, but, yeah, like you said, you know, it all speeds up. And like I started saying, when we were getting close to the. To the area, we first of all, the traffic started queuing up, so we weren't really sure what was happening. There were some traffic accidents along the road there. So we were thinking, well, that that explains the cues, but we were squeezing by slowly there.

And then eventually we saw a big sign pointing to the left saying, and there was a police officer standing there as well. So we stopped. Ask the police officer if this is the place that we were supposed to meet the local police. But I think it was chaos at the time and we. We didn't have the local information and we were in a hurry as well, so we couldn't just start working from there.

And there was, the first car from us was also down there because that was where the ferry were leaving from the land side, but we didn't really know that time, and no one told us either. And GPS at the time, this equipment that we had, we had one installed our car, but it was like, super slow lagging. And the smartphone that I had at the time was also lagging, which has to do with the capacity of the cell towers in the area at the time. So you couldn't really get any really good visual information on the area as well either.

So anyway, the police officer waved us on and we called on Comstat. We said that while we're not that far away from the meeting point. And then eventually we got there. And the police car, no, the police boat was already there waiting for us. We just took whatever gear we planned on taking along with us and then ran over to the police boat, linked up with a police boat driver, asked him, how many of us guys can you take in your boat? And he gave us a number. And there was another guy from my team. He was already in the boat. And we just said, well, two teams. You're a team leader on one team, I'm the team leader of the other team.

And then eventually we filled the boat off. So obviously we wanted to bring certain kind of equipment with us. So what we really needed in both teams was medic, medical gear because we knew that we would face multiple casualties and injured, and we also wanted to have a ballistic chill in each team so that we had extra protection. In addition to our ballistic pests and bulletproof helmets. So, yeah, so that was the shift from the cars and into the boat.

Jon Becker: What time do you guys get on the boat?

Guest: I think at it was about 06:15 so we arrived five or. Yeah, five, six past minutes past six. We are arriving. So we used more or less, less than half an hour from Oslo. And then we were loaded up in the boat about 06:15 and then there was some difficulty getting the boat off because it had. Most of the boat was standing on to, like, a rock, what do you call that? Rock pier. So it had to be pushed off the rock pier.

And, yeah, so with animation, you have stuff going wrong. So one of the things that happened pushing the boat off was that the boat driver, he sped the boat up in reverse, which made the rear of the boat sink down into the water, because it was still stuck on the rock pier. And that flooded the boat somewhat. I was sitting all the way to the left of the boat driver on the rear there. So we got soaked in water and then told him that he needed to slow down the engine.

And then we floated up again and eventually got the boat pushed off and we drove off. But what happened there was that the water had managed to get inside the petrol tank, which was strapped on the floor on the police boat there, because the lid was open. I think that was because of vacuum or having air flowing through the tank. But eventually water came in there.

So after leaving the rock pier and setting course for the island, we had engine troubles. So the engine started to stutter, and then eventually it would stop. First time we got the engine going again, but you could clearly hear that it wasn't running properly, because it was just constantly stuttering, not giving full power. And that was definitely frustrating.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Can only imagine.

Guest: Yeah. And I remember I had my phone on, downloading a map, and it would just, like, go, like, almost download, pixel by pixel. So at the time where I took my phone up, I had, like, a small picture of Uttaya, where I could see a main building, I could see some dirt roads going on the island.

I could see a red cabin. And the red cabin was facing on the south end of the island. And there was a pier going from the island out in the fjord. And that was about it. That was what the phone gave me at the time. And I just put it back into my pocket and we started dealing with the engine again, and we got it going a second time, and then it went on and we made some distance. Not that fast, because it was still stuttering.

And then eventually it stopped the third time and then it was just dead. We couldn't restart it, so we just told the guys up ahead in the front of the boat to start waving all the boats over to us because there were some civilian boats that we could see in the distance. And then eventually one of the boats there were coming towards us. So we just recommended that boat and loaded the two teams over to that boat and made up distance and speed in that boat.

And then we met a second boat which had a couple inside the boat, and that was a faster speedboat kind of type. And the team one team unloaded from onto that boat and then they drove off and just disappeared into the distance towards the island. And our boat couldn't drive that fast, so we were just holding speed. So we had the first team on the island. I think that was. I need to check mine notes, but what was that? That was about four minutes or 8, 26 minutes past six.

Jon Becker: So it took you about 15 minutes to get out there.

Guest: Yeah. With the boat troubles and everything.

Jon Becker: After two boat changes and a motor failure and a….

Guest: Yeah, yeah. So it took about 15 minutes and like I said, it was a couple of kilometers at least to drive on the lake there, or a fjord. And then my team, we arrived. So the first team that came there, they were just let off from the couple in the boat, and then the couple insisted on having the boat and because they were driving around picking up kids in the water that had just swam off from the island, so they arrived on the island, they were given some directions where to go by the other kids on the island that were just fleeing around in panic and crying.

So, and keep in mind, at the time, they didn't have any information that said otherwise. So they were just going with witness statement that they had on the time, and they were heading off on the northeast side of the island along the shore there. And shortly before we were arriving, the first message that they relayed back to us on the comms was that they had found a huge pile with about, I think it was ten to twelve dead teenagers that had been shot dead.

So that just that piece of information just goes into all the other pieces of information that we had at the time. And I remember that one of the last updates that we had before going on shore was that it was about then it was five to six perpetrators or shooters and there might be a sniper inside a white house on the island.

And I remember thinking that, well, s***, that might be the White House that I managed to see on my phone. And by the time we started getting closer, so we saw the White House. And for us, we started hearing rapid single shots, which our first team, they didn't hear any shots because he wasn't shooting at the time.

So we had sounds or shots. And we also saw a lot of people on the eastern shore of the island, which were facing towards us. They were on the shoreline. They were in the water, and you can see them being shot at. We saw the impact in the water, and we also had stray bullets flying by us in the boat. So we had shield up in front and just were trying to stay behind it, obviously, just hearing the bullets sizing by.

And I'm pretty sure that it wasn't any direct shots because there weren't that many. But we could see, like I said, people in the water, people swimming off, people falling on the shorelines. We knew that they were shot, either killed or seriously injured. And just on the ridge line behind the shoreline, there's just heavy forest, like, dense forest.

So we couldn't see any shooters. We only heard shots. And that was also a frustrating thing because we were just, like, constantly thinking, you know, let us see some of the attackers because then we can engage and shoot back at them. But anyway, that didn't happen.

So eventually we got close to the shoreline, and the plan was within my team. So we just jumped from the boat, run through the water onto the pier that we had seen on the map, and eventually up a staircase, like a stone staircase, and got just high enough to see that there were two people lying on the lawn up there.

And then we changed direction and followed, like, a forest line outside the lawn over to a shed. Did a quick reassessment of the team. Just giving a couple of orders and quickly crossing the lawn because it was big open space. And we just wanted to confront the perpetrators as quick as possible.

So we just yelled, armed police every now and then just to give ahead that we were coming in order to maybe provoke or scare the perpetrators or provoke them in engaging us instead of the teenagers. And eventually we picked up on the dirt road that I'd seen on the map as well. And we had shots just giving us directions all the time, rapid fires, and we're just heading off.

Eventually, we came to the red building, which I told you about, which was that little cottage that they call school cottage. And you could see the tent area there. I just remember this. It was just like an area that had been stumped by elephants. So you could clearly see signs of just huge crowds of people running in all kinds of directions. So, like, the panic was really visual to us there.

And then the firing stopped and we just huddled up and kind of sat there listening, trying to figure out the sounds and trying to get some sort of direction in wherever to go there. And then we heard one single shot that we heard really close.

And after that it was silent again. And then all of a sudden we picked up a person coming up and into the forest. And what we could see is on the norwegian police uniform, you have, like, reflectant pattern at the bottom, bottom end of all the old trousers. So we could see that the trouser that the person had had those reflective patterns.

But then again, it could also be a training trouser because we didn't see anything of the upper body. We didn't see any weapons. So we just yelled at the person saying, armed police, freeze. And immediately the person stopped. And then he started running off to the left of us.

And then we just immediately ran off to intercept again the person. So we did that. And that was inside. He was inside the forest. And we were coming from an open area in there, just the whole team running down there. And while maintaining safety to the area around us, like a 360.

And then eventually the person, he disappeared really quick behind the knoll. And then he reappeared again to us. And immediately we could see that it was one of the perpetrators. No weapons in his hands. He was just walking with his hands like a walking cross, palms of his hands facing towards us. What was – What we could see, and like I said, it was dense forest. It was a bit dark, clouded.

So we didn't have the best visual outline of him. But what we could see that he was wearing some sort of vest and we saw some square objects in the – In that west. And he was just saying something mumbling all the time, walking towards us. We were giving orders, freeze. Or else he will be shot. Because we were. Immediately when we identified his west, we were thinking, maybe that's a suicide west. And he's kind of like walking towards us, getting closer and closer and then eventually detonating in the west.

So we felt pretty safe where we were standing. I was standing behind, like a huge tree trunk. And my colleague to my right, he was standing behind a tree trunk and with the ballistic shield and my colleagues to my left were doing the same. So we felt pretty safe, given that we had some sort of protection.

And then we had the ballistic protection and we were out in the open as well, given that if it had been a suicide vest. But he was just walking towards us with like a. Like we were reading him. It was like he's clearly giving up. But then all of a sudden, he came close enough for us to see that there was a light, like a white wire going from his west, from the pockets in his west up into his left arm. And I'll on his arm there somewhere. And that added up to maybe that one being a suicide west. So we just kept on doing what we do with the standard procedure for that. But he didn't stop walking.

So eventually what happened was that I was having him in my sights all the time, giving all of him orders. And then eventually he would start getting to that imaginary line where we found, like where I had drawn, saying, well, any closer than that, it will start getting dangerous to us.

So I shifted and then moved my sights from his chest and then immediately onto his face or a straight pin between. Underneath his nose, preparing to doing a headshot. But then I think it was in his last step, his vest became clear to us and we saw that it was rifle magazines and not a bomb vest. And no shots were fired because given the firearms directive that we have to work by, he's not any threat to us and he's no threat to any other persons either.

So his actions before has nothing to do with the moment we're handling him. So we would just basically threatening him. If he didn't stop, we would need to shoot him. And then eventually he stopped. And then he were arrested quickly and put to ground and put handcuffs on.

Jon Becker: That was fire discipline.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. It is really interesting, that part, because it's definitely a tense moment of the mission, but at the same time, it feels kind of comfortable, but at the same time, not so comfortable because, you know, that he might propose a threat to us.

But I remember, especially with my rifle, I mean, it's made a really distinct sound just before the trigger went off. And I got to that point where I felt, you know, I felt that response in my trigger finger, and I heard a sound. And then immediately, just nanoseconds before the trigger is actually firing the bullets off, we immediately see that it is net bomb west. And then the finger goes off the trigger, and you just reassess the guy again.

So I've never been that close firing my gun in any missions without actually firing it. I wish I was that day. So, yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think you could have been forgiven for killing the guy, but it is obviously a tremendous amount of discipline to not kill him and to have that patience.

Guest: Yeah. That's one of the things I've been thinking about, because I know that, like you said, you would be forgiven shooting him, given our first impression of the situation with it might being a bombast and everything. But then again, it's something I stand by afterwards, at least.

I mean, I would have felt it unprofessional if I'd shot him and then later found out that they had a bomb west, if, you know, because I was still feeling safe, giving the distance and everything, but because that he was maybe one step more, and he would definitely have got shot, and then he would have been killed, and then there's lots of stuff we wouldn't have known in Norway, you know.

Jon Becker: That's fair. So, okay, so he gives up, and at this point, you still think you have multiple suspects, right? Like, it's. The problem isn't over. You've solved part of it. What happens next?

Guest: So what's happened next is that we take complete control of him. And from the way that we have oriented ourselves on the island, we know that behind that knoll, which actually what we found behind that Knoll was his rifle. So he ran behind that knoll and threw away his rifle. I'll get back to him what I think about why he did that. But we knew that behind that knoll, there was the shoreline that we had seen arriving, the island.

So we knew that there had to be multiple casualties and injured people there. So we were just doing a quick reassessment. And like I said, it was just eerie quiet afterwards. And we were still giving that, you know, one down, five to six more to go. So we got the message through to the rest of the teams and to our central in Oslo that we had apprehended one perpetrator and that we weren't hearing any more shots, so we didn't have any kind of directions to go through.

So I just made a call that, you know, well, no one is being shot at the moment. There weren't anyone screaming either. So whatever. The only thing that we had was that we knew that there were people needing help just behind that mall. So I just said, well, I'll stay here with a guy, and I'll pump in for information.

And then my medicinal. I told him to just take the rest of the team with him and take all the medical gear that we had and then go down starting to help out the people that we knew were by the shoreline there. And he was also told that as soon as we hear any more firing or people screaming, you need to stop what you're doing. Come back here and we'll head towards that area where the sound is coming from. And he went off with the rest of the team there.

So they immediately afterwards, I got a quick seat trap, and he just said, you know, there were people everywhere. Serious gun injuries and people killed all over the place. And they did an amazing effort, rescuing several people, running out of the medical equipment and coming back for more. I emptied my pockets, so we had actually used up all our personal kits as well. And they started making improvised sorts of 20 ks and stuff.

Yeah. And the number just grew by the time we did that. And it was still quiet on the whole island. No sounds whatsoever. You only heard the rain falling on leaves in the forest. And then eventually one team of our that had been searching along the shoreline, they came and we linked up and had a quick hand over all the information.

And then they continued doing a shore search from along the eastern shoreline all the way to the south point and further on. So by this time, there were several teams working more or less on the whole of the island, clearing the island, going through the buildings. And we had comms problems, so we couldn't, you know, there were some messages that were cut off and some messages that wasn't even heard by us that were further away from the messages.

So we had difficulties communicating on the island. But eventually we heard stuff. And one of the messages that kept on being relayed was that we found a large amount of dead people. We found a large amount of dead people. And that just grew in numbers. So we were just conveying the information from the island via our mission leader and further on to the police, local police district. And they were writing out the numbers pretty quick, which just quickly grew.

So we were just searching and then doing that for hours. And eventually we started setting up evacuation security, evacuation routes. And then we started emptying the different kind of buildings. And, yeah, people were just, you know, peeping out from every hiding place you could think of and not think of.

So inside the red cottage that I told you about, which were one of the last buildings that we had made, like, a quick padlock and reassessment next to, there were bullet holes in the doors there, but inside there were. I don't remember exact number, but there were several people that had just hid inside the building. And there was staying dead quiet because they didn't want to make any sounds.

And the perpetrator, he had actually tried to ignite that cottage as well, but he didn't manage to create any fire, so he didn't catch fire, but they were super scared because we were wearing police uniforms. We were saying that we were police and we had armor guns. So they were thinking that we were there to kill them, not to rescue them. And I was just like, it was just not going through their heads, obviously, because they were in complete panic.

So we had to say several times that we're the real police, we're here to help you and you don't need to worry. But they were panicking. And I remember one of the things that my medic told me afterwards was that he came to one of the survivors which just immediately said, you know, I can't take it anymore. Just kill me now. Kill me now and get over with it. I'm tired of running. Which obviously made a huge impression to him when he said, you know, we're not here to kill you. We're the real police and we are here to rescue you.

So, yeah, so that was kind of going through the next hour and we didn't find any more perpetrators. There were someone that we kind of like, suspected of maybe being perpetrators because, like I said, there weren't any more shooting. There was a miscommunication because one of the guys, he used his shotgun to open a door and we heard, obviously two shots being fired. We heard it was. We reckon it was a shotgun because it sounded like a shotgun being fired off and not a rifle. Ammunition.

But, yeah, we got on the comms that someone had used a shotgun to open a door and then that was it. Silence ever after. So we were thinking, well, they're either mixed in so they're part of the crowd on the island, or they have gone into hiding on the island or they managed to escape the island, you know, using boats or whatever.

Jon Becker: Everybody you encounter is a threat.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Every single living person is a threat.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Every tree you pass, every. Every section of the forest. Like, there could be another shooter anywhere on the island.

Guest: Yeah, exactly. So we were still, like, conducting searches and keeping our guard up high. And like you said, every person that we met, unless you immediately knew we were treating them accordingly. Until then, we were absolutely certain that they weren't the perpetrators.

Jon Becker: What did the suspect say when you, when you interrogated the suspect? What did he say? Did he admit that he was a soul shooter or…

Guest: No, that's the thing. He didn't do that. So he was obviously, he was, he was, he was pretty triggered. He was high up. He wasn't violent or anything. So it was a pretty straightforward arrest. And, yeah, I remember some of the stuff I said, but he was basically preaching about his ideology. And he definitely had a huge need to explain why he had done what he had done that day.

But the thing is, just a couple of meters to our right where we upper handed it, there were two young people lying in the grass there, which were obviously then been shot in the head and, like, really young teenagers. And he showed no remorse, no sympathy, no empathy, nothing whatsoever. He was just set on explaining to me why he had done it.

And one thing that I really remember, and I don't think I'll ever forget it, because it's a, I mean, it's such an absurd logic, but he said, you know, there will come a day where you will see me as a hero for what I've done here today.

Jon Becker: Yeah, well, we're not even f****** close to that day, so.

Guest: No, no. And I remember my reply. It was like just a straightforward replied saying, well, I'm pretty sure that that day will never come. There's no one in Norway that will ever see you as a hero, that's for sure. But he was non cooperative in the beginning. He were complaining about the tiny wound on his finger, that it hurt, and he needed medical assistance for that. Obviously didn't get it. There were no time for doing that. And he really didn't want to.

First of all, he didn't want to. He was. He was turning away every time I tried to take his picture and didn't really want to answer any questions. He definitely gave the impressions that there were more terrorist cells that were hiding and that were planning on conducting more attacks. He did not want to confess whether or not if he was alone or there were more perpetrators on the island.

And, yeah, so what I eventually ended up doing is I just stopped talking to him. And then eventually he would stop talking as well. And then I said his name, and then he would turn around, and I was standing there ready with my camera, and I took his picture. And then we had a picture of him with his whole outfit.

And I conveyed that to our command central, and they conveyed it further on to the police. Yeah, because, yeah, yeah, he had all the equipment on him. So that was kind of like the quick interrogation out there in the field. And then from also, there were two special interrogators coming onto the island as well. So eventually he would be taken back to the White House or the main building on the island for preliminary interrogation there by those two police officers.

Jon Becker: How long was it until the next wave of support arrived on the island? So you guys are kind of by yourself for a while there. But how long is it till you start to get some more medical support and more police support and more boats and all of that?

Guest: Yeah, well, you kind of, like, touched into it already because of the threat level. We couldn't take that one down immediately. So what we did, we were evacuating the people that needed evacuation from the island, using the boats, and then driving them with the boats onto the mainland.

And by that time, it had just piled up with medical resources on the land side. And there were also by then, I. We've also gotten helicopters. So it was just a huge pool of resources standing by, both in a resource area that the police had predetermined and also where the ferry comes and goes. And also there's lots of civilian people with civilian boats. They've been picking up kids before our arrival as well from the water and just let them off on the land.

Jon Becker: Side because the kids were running into the. I mean, the water's freezing cold, right? I'm assuming the water, it's a fjord. It's not, you know, it's what, the fifties? Forties?

Guest: Yeah. No, more. I mean, nothing much more. I would say maybe about 20 degrees celsius.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Guest: So it's like 70. Yeah, it's typical Norwegians water temperatures in the summer.

Jon Becker: So kids are trying to swim off the island. He's shooting at kids that are trying to swim off the island.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Kids are hiding along the shoreline. Like, it's just. It is such a horrific thing to imagine a guy walking around for an hour and 15 minutes killing children on an island who are trapped on the island and have nowhere to go. It's, you know, and then to have to roll into that, I can only imagine the lasting effects it had on everybody involved in the operation.

Guest: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could definitely relate to that part, both as a human being and also as a parent yourself, obviously. And like you said, I mean, I think you have to take this with a pinch of salt, but I think only one person actually drowned. There were 69 people that were killed on the island, and one of those persons drowned.

And I think one person also fell down from a cliff and died from the fall. But obviously, both of those incidents are related to the perpetrator. So he's responsible because. For both of those depths. But, yeah, like you said, he was just basically walking around shooting fish in a barrel from his perspective.

And what we learned during his trial as well was because of the testimonies from the kids and some of these testimonies we got already during that evening when we started the evacuation, you know, that he had been walking around, he had been faking a police officer's officer, and then he would call people out from their hiding places, line them up, saying that, you know, I'm here, there's a bomb gone off in Oslo, and I'm here to protect you and help you, but I will need to write down your name and information, so you will need to stand in line.

And then he would just instantly take his rifle and kill them at the spot. And when we were doing the clearance of the rest of the islands, we obviously saw those spots where you could just see people just basically lying there. And some of them had piled up as well because they've just huddled together out of panic and fear.

And so, yeah, that's the kind of human that was killing the teenagers on that island. And he said something in the course of, you know, he didn't want to go through with that. He wanted to stop killing them several times. And he called in to the police before we got there as well, saying that he had some really strange demands, by the way. He would just, he wouldn't talk to any normal police. He would only talk to a certain level of police officers, like really grandiose thinking from his perspective.

But, yeah, so he would just say, you know, I want to. I want to surrender. And then he would hang up the call and start killing again. So, yeah, I judge him from his actions, and there's nothing in his actions that indicates that he really wanted to surrender and stop killing those teenagers.

Jon Becker: For sure. So how long was it until you guys had totally cleared the island? So this is, you know, now we're what, 06:30 p.m?

Guest: Yeah, he was. Yeah, we made, I think we arrived shortly before 06:30 then we touched down on the island. And then we just quickly ran towards the direction of the shots that we heard. And he was arrested. I think it was four or five minutes afterwards. So yeah. And then.

Jon Becker: And how long is it till you have cleared the whole island and are confident that he is the only suspect?

Guest: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we. That took several hours, like I said, because all the dog and the, there was darkness creeping in as well. So we had to, sorry, we had to get our night vision goggles in order to go through the island. So the first way was. Search was just like a really rough one, clearing the areas really quickly, every hooks and corners of the buildings and the island.

And then we would reassess and then make sure that we had covered all the area, and then we would go through a second time, like fine cooling it. And then you said something about the other resources, but they were just on the island. We got local police coming in as well eventually, and several teams from us. I don't remember exactly how many people or police officers that was on the island at the time, but there were a lot eventually assisting with the search and homing on the island.

So I think about must have been closer to 10:30 or eleven in the evening. We had made sure of the number of dead, which we relate to the local police officer, local police district, and our command center. And by that, we weren't 100% sure if – Or if not, you know, was it only one or was it more? We couldn't be 100% sure, but we were having an intuition that it's a bit strange they must have run off if there were more.

And also because no one was sticking out from the crowd that we had been evacuating, and everyone that was evacuated, that didn't need medical care, they were just driven to a hotel and taken care of by the local police, going through, interrogating and making sure that the story added up and that they weren't any suspects. So we were.

Jon Becker: By the time we're done, we end up with 69 kids, you know? 69 people killed on the island.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Was it eight or nine killed in Oslo?

Guest: Eight killed in Oslo. So by that time, 77 altogether. And then I think you had. There were just under 60 people that were badly injured on the Uteya. They were evacuated into the hospitals. And so, you know, some of those people weren't certain to survive either. So it was kind of like touch and go widows, but eventually they ended up surviving. There was only. I think it was only one person that died. He'd been shot badly in the head when we evacuated him, but he was alive at the hospital, but in. Obviously not conscious and in coma, but, yeah, so, yeah, it was 69 altogether that died on it.

Jon Becker: So let's walk through kind of lessons learned. You know, obviously, this is. This is why your unit existed. Not this specific scenario, but this kind of incident. What changed in the aftermath of the event and research and report and after action reports? What changed in the team? What did you do differently on the heels of this event?

Guest: Well, obviously, we evaluated everything, and what we found is that for the most, our focus for our training had been correct, because several of us said that we had immediately recognized their mission and we knew what to do, and we were confident in our skills and equipment and everything. I think what really changed was, you know, definitely our mission of protecting the citizens of Norway.

And also that was kind of like the day where the terror actually hit Norway as well. So you – We definitely got, like a re certification that it is real and it can happen anytime. You know, we also got lots of information about our equipment. What changed is that we invested in better communication gear.

And we also, obviously, you gotta look into, like you said, you know, for the most, those kind of shooting incidents are done by a single perpetrator. Like, it's just. And we knew, knew that from, like you said, like Columbine and other school shootings that had been up until then. But we had it.

Yeah. I don't know if it's kind of like understanding, but what we did, it, what we actually did was we just really, really galvanized the focus on our training. And because the way that we train is that we see the trends and we are given intention by our chief, and that intention is anchored in intelligence report, and then we break that down into how to conduct our training.

So, yeah, what really changed is that we'd always been on call, like I said, because that's part of our main mission, that we need to be available to whoever needs us. But that became even clearer after that day.

So, like I said, it just galvanized a lot of routines that we already had in place, and we improved them in whatever way we could. You know, having the gear ever slightly more ready, packing the car ever slightly more ready than before, having an even more focused way of conducting the training on suicide bombers, obviously, which we, we hadn't actually trained that procedure for that long when we actually had the mission. But it's definitely helped.

So it made it realer, simply because we had thought that it might be a suicide vest in the beginning. And then that's only for my unit, if that's what you're really interested for. Obviously, it's changed the whole of Norway from a police perspective.

Like I said, it was summertime, and it's quite common to cut down on staff during summer vacation. So in the local police districts, I think it was. I think it initially was only one person working on the receive center there from the 911 calls. And obviously that person was quickly overworked and just flooded with telephones and different tasks to do.

But eventually they became two, so they were on demand. And I guess that's kind of like, always calculated risk that you take. And some of the things that changed was also the agreement that we had with army choppers, they improved the release of the chopper. So, like, the decision making levels of the request were improved. And, yeah, basically what was really improved was every way that resources can be deployed quicker, better and faster.

Jon Becker: Norway, as a country, has a kind of curious relationship with violence. Right? It's not a country that loves violence and not all that enthusiastic about having guns and law enforcement, all those kinds of things. How did this change public support for the unit?

Guest: Yeah, well, that's an interesting question, because, I mean, first of all, it's always been a really black and white debate in Norway. Should the police wear guns or not? It's like you said, we as a nation prefer unarmed police. That's what's kind of like the official version.

And to some extent, I think it's kind of like, it's nice, but still, the police have certain kind of tasks, and one of them is to protect their citizens. And, yes, like you said, I don't think Norway is definitely not the most violent country in the world.

Jon Becker: Oh, no!

Guest: But every now and then, we do have a lot of guns because there's a lot of hunters in this country, so we definitely do have a lot of guns around, and there's a lot of illegal guns on the market as well, among the criminals. So we do have the firearms. All you need is the person, and every now and then, you have crazy people as well that have guns or manage to get their hands on guns. So we do have all the ingredients, but our culture is kind of peaceful.

And I think that is what gives us this peaceful view and also makes it a peaceful country, which is, to some extent, Norway is kind of like, also probably a safe haven to a lot of criminals as well, just because of those things. But we do have, we do have, you know, there are some drug gangs, other criminals, like robbers, which are quite violent and use a lot of firepowers, power when they do or commit their crimes. But, yeah, for the most, compared to us, we are in the other end of the scale by far.

Jon Becker: It's actually really interesting. I mean, the guy only got 21 years in prison.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Like, in the US, we would have locked. I mean, we probably would have executed him. Probably, certainly would have locked him up and hit him with, you know.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: 70 different life sentences. Your judicial system gave him 21 years in prison.

Guest: Yeah. And it's. It's, yeah, it's, it's seeing from your perspective, it has to be strange. And it's. That's the thing, you know, he survived. So it's Norway did some changes simply because of him surviving, because it challenged our legal system. So for one, he was in the – At one point he were found to be unfit for prison. So because the psychiatrist, that assassin made that conclusion and that was challenged and then it was turned around.

So he was actually found few to serve in prison. And we only have a maximum of 21 years. But what has happened with his, we also have an additional something that is called, again, you are put on, I think it's a ten year period, and then every ten year you are reassessed if you are fit to be released. And he hasn't been found fit to be released, obviously, so he's too dangerous.

So it's kind of like a strange. I'm not an expert on those matters either, though. But he has those 21 years and then he has ten years. Ten years and ten years. And that can eventually end up being his life sentence because he will need to be cleared by psychiatrists. And I don't think at this point no psychiatrist been willing to take the chance to say that, you know, he has been, he's learned his lesson, he's fit to be let free into the society again because he keeps on doing stuff.

Every now and then there's stuff sparking up here in Norway, which he has initiated. But for the most, people are, unlike, forgotten him and they don't want to. Like you said, you know, we won't mention his name. And I think that that is a good thing. He should really just be forgotten about in jail.

And, yeah, what you asked about earlier was with the weapons debate and the police, obviously that one sparked up, you know, so, yeah, and it was debated once again, and once again the conclusion was made that for the most, you know, the police don't need to be armed all the time. But like I said, we also did some changes which has to do with what kind of equipment we are allowed to have inside our cars. So, yeah, like I said, it has to be with preparedness.

You know, we have made the path of getting stuff as a police officer easier. That's one of the outcomes from 22nd July, because obviously you need certain kind of equipment to function as a police officer if your job is to rescue other people when they need to be rescued.

But it's a funny thing, it's something that is going on today as well. And you have the whole political side of Norway engaging in the whole thing. And for the most, the middle part isn't really discussed and that's where it should really be discussed, because that's where all the answers and the good solution is. But it's a black and white, it's really for all rounds.

Jon Becker: Don't feel bad. It's not just you.

Guest: No, I don't feel bad. Obviously, like I said, we have the weapons directory, firearms directive that we have and as a police officer, it gives me lots of freedom. I am allowed to arm myself and I see that fit and I make that call. So, yeah, it gets.

Jon Becker: So to conclude our time together, let's talk about what kind of your personal, the fallout to the team. Did any of the guys, did you lose any of the guys on the team after this because of the effect of the event on them?

Guest: No, we did. And to my understanding today, none of the guys have really had any bad fallouts coming from participating in that mission. We did. The day afterwards I had a quick diffusing with my team because my unit is really good on having that, you know, that human focus and taking care of us operators after having gone through serious missions.

Yeah, so that was on the Saturday when things were really fresh. None of the guys expressed any kind of issues to me. And from my point of view as well, they were functioning the way I knew that they were functioning normally. And then on the Monday afterwards.

So after the weekend, we had a huge unity briefing with every unit or team and operator involved in the mission. And I – We were, yeah, we have. We have a psychologist that we can use if we want to, and obviously we have colleagues that we talk with. So we have all these sorts of different arenas to vent out if we need to vent out. And my understanding is that everyone was talking about it, everyone that wasn't taking part of the mission was also coming and asking. So you had a good work through. Obviously you saw stuff that's, I wouldn't say haunt you, but you're going to remember them for the rest of your life.

One thing, when we're doing the sweep afterwards, in the evening there, you saw the cell phones. So the teenagers, some of them went out in the water because they had been undressing for preparing for the sport swim. And they pile their clothes together and phones were lying on top of the clothes and the display would light up. Even when the phones in the water and you could see mom, dad, you know, obviously it's easy to put yourself in that situation, being that parent in the other end. You have heard about what's happening, you know that your kid is on the island and you can't get hold of them.

So that's something that I think, for my part, I'm always going to remember that because I can identify with that. But, yeah, my impression is that we were taking really good care of Bama units and the guys took care of themselves and we looked after each other in time afterwards. You mentioned lesson learned.

One of the lessons that we learned was media, you know, and the public's expectations to policing in general and especially those kinds of missions. So first of all, the expectations, you can never, ever live up to the expectations because they're unrealistic. You know, if I were a criminal, I can at any given time take my weapons, put them in a bag, walk onto a train station, whatever public place in Norway, pull that one out and kill tens of people before the police catch the smith.

That's the vulnerability in the society, and that's the vulnerability of being a democracy. So that was it. And the media is just, they're out for blood and they're out to criticize, and it just goes on and on and on and on. And that was another experience. You know, you need to be, someone in the police need to be ahead of the media and giving educational information because obviously there's a lot that you can't say simply because of you're not allowed to say them. It's confidential information.

But you can say something about, you know, how did the police solve those kind of missions? What are the challenges? Like you and I've been talking about, you know, the information, you know, that the information you, you are given haven't been, you know, it hasn't been checked out.

And also, you know, that you are going to be, every step, every decision that you have made is going to be looked upon. And people make the mistake of looking upon them with the eyes of all the information that I received afterwards when every stone has been turned. And so that is the media part and lesson learned from media. And eventually it went on.

So for that, it started on, you know, it started creating frustration along with the guys as well. Because if you look on the timeline and if you look on when the mission was or the initial message was given to the police and then when the guy was perpetrated, it doesn't take a lot of time, and you have to account for driving, you have to account for the issues with the boat, and you have to account for the, what would you say, the lack of proper police material? Because this wasn't, it wasn't like a black swan incident happening, sadly. It had been something that we had been training for, for quite a while. And it had happened in other parts of the world as well.

So there was stuff that could have been made ready in advance that sadly wasn't there. And afterwards things started getting in place, obviously, because then the incident had happened and things had been made real.

So I think the lesson learned is that, you know, it's, listen to the qualified police officers within the police and make sure that you take the right steps in order to having the right amount of training in place. You have to have, like I said, you have to train with other police districts as well, you know, because we will need to work together on the incidents.

And all of that has improved by quantum leaps afterwards, which is really nice, but with the media thing, it's really hard to handle, but you can't stay silent because they will just flow over you with whatever they have.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's very easy to, after you have all the information, to retrospectively look at the situation and solve it.

Guest: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So last question. What are you most proud of in the event, your response, what are you most proud of?

Guest: You know, I am most proud of the guys in my team that actually did the medical assistance to all the people that needed it. They saved a bunch of lives, that's for sure, because that's came back to my unit from the hospitals that got the injured people on their operation tables. So I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the way that my unit has taken all the experiences and put them into training, like you said, even though I recognize that it might not sound like we have changed that much in our training, which sometimes our mission is giving you confirmation that you are on the route right path. This one did that for my unit.

And I'm also proud of the civilians that they didn't have any special training that day and they were basically out on the, on the Fjord, enjoying the afternoon in their boats. And then all of a sudden they just, you know, reached out and started helping those kids. They, for sure as well, they are, yeah. I always seen them as unlike forgotten heroes and they have their own traumas from that day. They've been in the media here in Norway.

And I'm proud of Norway as a society that you have those kind of people stepping up, risking their life and in helping others. Yeah, I guess that would be the ones, really.

Jon Becker: You should also be very proud of the professionalism you guys displayed because it would have been very easy to kill that guy. It would have been very easily to beat him to death. The restraint the unit showed in light of that horrific circumstance is very impressive.

So, hey, man, thank you! I appreciate your time! I appreciate coming on and talking about it. And like I said, you guys should be very proud of yourselves.

Guest: Yeah, thank you, Jon, for saying, and I'll be sure to relay that one to the guys. We appreciate that! And thanks for having me on your podcast!

Jon Becker: My pleasure!