Rick Bedell

Rick served over 21 years in the United States Army. Twelve of those years were as a Special Forces Operator and seven years as a Counterintelligence Technician.

Upon his military retirement, he continued to work for the U.S. government as an Independent Contractor. He has over 50 years’ experience with firearms and has been an instructor since 1990, both military and civilian.

As a Special Forces Operator, he developed marksmanship classes and taught them, in French, to the military in several African countries.

He is an NRA Certified Pistol Instructor and an NRA Chief Range Safety Officer. He is also a certified USCCA Instructor in the following disciplines: Concealed Carry and Home Defense Fundamentals, Emergency First Aid Fundamentals, Countering the Mass Shooter Threat, and Women’s Handgun and Self-Defense Fundamentals. He is also a John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School Certified Anti-Terrorism Instructor.

As a Counterintelligence Technician, he conducted interrogations in Combat and National Level Investigations for reports of Espionage and Insider Threats. 

As an Independent Contractor, he has worked for numerous Government Agencies; including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where he developed and presented a foreign travel briefing to ODNI and CIA personnel traveling abroad. He is also the Co-author of the ODNI Insider Threat Policy. Weekly, he provided all new hire onboarding Counterintelligence Awareness Training, which included personal protection techniques and technical protection measures to counter Foreign Intelligence Entities collection efforts.

He earned a Master of Science Degree from the University of Maryland University College, in Cybersecurity. He also served the government in this capacity and is a Certified Cyber Forensic Examiner.

He served two tours of duty in Iraq and two in Afghanistan, with a total of six combat tours.