Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Eric Robinson from Preacher to Breacher, Ex-Pastor’s Irreverent FBI Adventures S2-EP21

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Eric Robinson from Preacher to Breacher, Ex-Pastor’s Irreverent FBI Adventures S2-EP21 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  And I talked to my buddy the other day.
• 0:01
  I was like, hey, how's the operations been going?
• 0:03
  He goes, oh, my gosh.
• 0:05
  Like, literal basement was just flooded with feces.
• 0:11
  And we had to go down and rescue the drones.
• 0:13
  And he says we were, like, taking buckets and, like, playing the floor as lava, except the floor was poop.
• 0:18
  And, you know, like, trying to go through and, like, pick.
• 0:30
  all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the space tomatoes podcast i'm one
• 0:50
  of your hosts havoc i'm the other guy lx not a fed promise also not a fed
• 0:57
  We all have three.
• 1:00
  All three have something in common, at least now.
• 1:03
  Today, we're joined by a guest, Eric Robinson, a recently retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who left his role as a pastor after 12 years to become an FBI agent.
• 1:17
  Welcome to the show, Eric.
• 1:18
  Thanks for having me there, guys.
• 1:22
  Used to be a Fed.
• 1:23
  No longer a Fed.
• 1:25
  Friends with Feds, though.
• 1:26
  Yeah.
• 1:27
  You wouldn't have to tell us if we asked anyway, right?
• 1:29
  Actually, there are rules about that.
• 1:32
  So depending on – I mean this is absolutely not something I expected that we would talk about.
• 1:36
  But we have rules within our manual of when you can and can't hide your role as an FBI agent, which is interesting.
• 1:46
  I didn't think I'd be asked that.
• 1:48
  Wow.
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  I just – I guess I just thought that they could lie as much as they wanted to.
• 1:54
  It depends on the circumstances and what your role is.
• 1:58
  Yeah.
• 1:59
  All right.
• 2:00
  So I guess, you know, my first question, the obvious one, right?
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  How do you look so young at this age?
• 2:08
  Yeah.
• 2:09
  Oh, no.
• 2:09
  Yeah, exactly.
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  How do you look so young when you're now?
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  How do you go from, you know, over a decade?
• 2:16
  Was it 12 years as a pastor?
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  And then what is the impetus that says, I want to be an FBI agent and transition from a pastoral role into that role?
• 2:34
  Yeah, I was in my late 20s, early 30s, and I thought I'd be doing this for another 50 years because you can preach when you're 80 years old.
• 2:44
  That's fine. It's not heavy lifting.
• 2:47
  But the issue that I had as we were in Western New York and along with a core group of Christians, we had planted a church that was meant to be one for outreach.
• 2:57
  So we want I told these folks, if you want to be a part of this, we're going to make mistakes on the side of showing too much grace to people, of being nonjudgmental.
• 3:09
  So if people come, you got to be able to accept them if they're not wearing church clothes.
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  if they've got weird tattoos or piercings, you know, what if they smell like alcohol?
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  Like we need to make sure that people coming in don't feel judged.
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  And we did really well.
• 3:27
  And we're bringing in folks who hadn't been to church before and didn't grow up in that life.
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  However, one of the issues with that is people who don't grow up in church,
• 3:38
  sometimes they have life problems.
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  And so they brought their life problems with them.
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  And I found myself not capable of separating my life from theirs where when they brought me burdens, I held on to those things.
• 3:54
  So because of that, for two straight years, every single day, I had stress-related headaches.
• 4:01
  So wake up in the morning and I knew it was going to come and here comes a headache.
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  So there just came a point where I had to find something else to do, even though we were successful, even though I was doing what I really enjoyed.
• 4:17
  I couldn't do it anymore.
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  So I told my wife, I need to find a job with less stress.
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  And so I joined the FBI.
• 4:25
  So was this was this forgive me if this is a little more personal and I certainly don't want to, you know, you know, break any of those bonds.
• 4:35
  I feel that those need to be respected.
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  But was this more of a, you know, testimonial, confessional type of a thing that was causing the problem?
• 4:46
  No, it was, I mean, in some cases, but it was just people saying, I've got, you know, my wife's cheating on me.
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  And, you know, my kid might be developing a drug problem.
• 4:58
  Um, we had one of our worship leaders and this guy was a good friend of mine.
• 5:07
  Uh, he had a mental breakdown and then started going online and met another woman and left
• 5:15
  his wife.
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  And, you know, that's, that was a burden to me because it was, this is someone I cared
• 5:21
  about.
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  Whereas in law enforcement, there's plenty of times things don't go the way I want them
• 5:26
  to.
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  And ultimately, I don't care that much.
• 5:30
  Bad guys get away.
• 5:32
  Okay.
• 5:33
  And, you know, that'll happen.
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  And it didn't affect me in the same way that these people that I should care about then affected me long term.
• 5:47
  It's always been a struggle.
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  I think it's a struggle for a lot of people.
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  It's interesting to hear this as being a struggle from someone that was in a pastoral role.
• 5:57
  is, is, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people get turned off from the church, whatever that may be for them, not because of the teachings, not because of the, the, you know, the, the leadership at the church, but because of the other people at church.
• 6:19
  And that's it's always been something that I always kind of, you know, had to struggle with myself.
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  And I'm also one of those, you know, walk in and T-shirts and jeans and, you know, I figure if the good Lord can make his disciples to wear sackcloth, I'm certainly no better than one of them.
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  So, you know, if that's an acceptable form of garb, then I think I'm OK.
• 6:47
  Yeah, this was a Baptist church as well. And so the one that we had been planted off of was the kind where if you didn't wear a tie, you should be explaining why you're not wearing a tie because Jesus wants you in a suit and tie.
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  And there's some of those silly add-ons that are there.
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  Like I remember playing Uno with some of the kids in the youth group.
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  And, you know, the old ladies coming by.
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  So I never thought I'd see people playing cards at church function.
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  I'm like, it's not strip Uno.
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  It's not like whenever you color, you know, you reverse to red, you have to take a drink.
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  It's a simple game.
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  Yeah, as someone that lives in the South, Southern Baptist is quite interesting. Even if you point to the fact that there are definitive verses in scripture that basically admonish peacocking, right?
• 7:47
  Yeah. Dressing up in gold and jewelry and all of that stuff is is not considered. But anyway, so so you're writing a book about your experience in the FBI. I guess my first question on that, I like to ask authors is, you know, was this was this difficult for you? Or is this just something that is flowing or has flowed for you? What's that process look like for you?
• 8:13
  flowing. What I did was to write about some of the cases that I was a part of investigations,
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  whether I initiated them or I played a role in them. And just like it happens with FBI agents,
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  I just got to hang out with some of my buddies. I'm three months retired
• 8:32
  and the SWAT team is hosting tryouts. And so I got to go out and see them. And
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  immediately people are telling stories. So whenever there's open time where you're
• 8:42
  waiting on a dope dealer to show up or it's after an operation, a search warrant. People tell
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  stories. And so this was natural. This is what, this is what folks do anyway. I was just writing
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  it on the computer. And so, yeah, sitting down, I thought, oh, hey, let me tell the story about
• 9:02
  the time I did this. Oh yeah, right. And then there was that time I did this and oh, the guy
• 9:08
  on our squad arrested. Oh, there was that one weekend where we had two cases culminate,
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  where we arrested two sets of mass shooters before they attacked people. You know,
• 9:21
  the two biggest cases on our squad, and they went back to back from one day to the next. So,
• 9:27
  just remembering so many of those occasions that for us was like, yeah, this is the case we did.
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  This is, you know, a Tuesday.
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  And yet I also know it's pretty cool.
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  It was, it's like you tell somebody that story and you take the time to go in depth and people think that's amazing.
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  So most of my days, you know, in the FBI, tedious, doing garbage things, you know, having to take silly online classes for bloodborne pathogens or something.
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  And then there's those, you know, occasions here and there.
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  so if you just compress all that and say hey let me tell that story in a fascinating way and leave
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  out all the times the uh computer went down turns out it's pretty cool interesting did you uh i
• 10:19
  probably watched too much tv because uh yeah it's all fun and games on there i'm sure in the movies
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  oh wait i'm sure it's much different in real life and we had fun in games uh there's you know we we
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  plenty of jokes there's time for being serious when the public's looking and then there's
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  plenty of other times where you know we're pulling pranks on each other and and uh making
• 10:41
  light of each other but yeah that my youngest likes to watch criminal criminal minds and so
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  when she would put it on she would say you get five complaints and then you have to shut up
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  And I usually run out of those in the first couple of minutes.
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  I'm sure.
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  Yeah.
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  Hollywood doesn't always do a great job of,
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  of really driving the reality of things home.
• 11:08
  Well,
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  even to the point where we watch it and like one of the guys has a revolver.
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  I'm like,
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  no FBI agent can,
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  you're not allowed to have a revolver.
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  So.
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  Okay.
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  All right.
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  I had no idea on that one.
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  I think regular law enforcement still can, but most don't.
• 11:31
  Yeah, it depends on where you are.
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  There's some places where you have to bring your own gun because they don't have a budget.
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  Okay.
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  I didn't know that either.
• 11:42
  Yeah, for us, when I got in in 2002, there were still a couple of agents in the Chicago Division who had their revolvers.
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  And it got to a point where the types of weapons that you could have was narrowed and narrowed until it came down to it's all Glock and just a couple of handguns because they just want to streamline what the gunsmiths have to work on.
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  like this gun, that gun, or that gun, and all Glock.
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  And then just one type of rifle, too, now.
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  Oh, really?
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  Makes sense.
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  Just out of curiosity, what rifle is that?
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  It's either a Colt or a Rock River AR-15.
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  Okay.
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  Interesting.
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  Just makes it easy for the gunsmiths.
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  Did you did you add in any of the minutiae and doldrums into your book?
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  I imagine there's about 10 seconds of of adrenaline and and about seven hours, 59 minutes and 50 seconds of paperwork and stuff.
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  Yes, that is when I was working in Chicago.
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  That was my first office.
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  I'm getting adjusted to a new life in law enforcement.
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  And my wife would often say, oh, let me know when you guys are successful and you arrest the guy.
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  I'm so worried that you're going to be safe.
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  I'm like, if I die by any means in Chicago, it's going to be a car accident.
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  And we're sitting on these dope dealers.
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  and it would be like this is me sitting in my car you know turned like this because i'm looking down
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  that way you know for five hours before anything moves with my back killing me or my neck hurting
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  and you know you try to switch and then you get on the radio and say hey can somebody else take
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  the eye because i i gotta walk around a bit so somebody pulls into your spot and then the guy
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  leaves like at 5 p.m finally and all of a sudden the adrenaline goes straight up and you're chasing
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  to catch up in a busy city.
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  So you don't use like the cable box van
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  so you all get comfy cozy chairs
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  and monitors and listening stuff?
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  We have, but not often
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  because we'll be sitting on a guy.
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  We're probably tapped into his phone
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  and so whoever's sitting on the phone tap
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  is going to have a radio
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  and tell us what's being said
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  and then everybody else out on the street
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  is now following in case he's going to
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  meet up with a supplier or a buyer and now we can videotape that connection maybe we'll have the
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  local police knock down the guy after he buys from him and then we can take the drugs from him and let
• 14:35
  him go call it a rip and then we can preserve the phone tap while these guys think there's just dirty
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  cops involved so yeah a lot of nothing and then all of a sudden very exciting so you said rip
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  I don't know if that's terminology or.
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  Yeah.
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  So what we would often do is if we if we know that there's going to be a drug buy or sale going on, whether it's an informant or, you know, we know from the phone that this seller is going to go to this buyer.
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  We would be set up then that once the sale gets done, we'd follow the drugs away in that vehicle.
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  We'd have the police pull them over.
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  you know, see if they're compliant. And then when they're stopped, they just take the drugs.
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  We'll do a search, take the drugs. It's just, it's all police. It's not, not FBI. And then
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  they take that away and they just say, you're free to go. And so the guy just thinks it's dirty cops.
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  So now we have drug evidence that we'll charge these guys with later. We'll preserve the phone
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  tap because they just think some dirty cop got lucky.
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  They don't think somebody is listening to their phone.
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  And that's why we know that happened.
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  And now we have evidence of how their words on the phone about drug sales are true because
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  we're holding a kilogram of cocaine in our hands.
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  That's a big amount, I think.
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  I'm guessing the CIs, the informants have quite a bit to do with catching.
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  some of these people uh how does it how do you build a relationship with someone like that because
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  i'm sure it's a lot of uh i mean do they come to you or you catch them on something and you kind of
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  say hey if you help us out we'll give you a deal yeah in this scenario it's almost always we caught
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  them you know it will be local police saying hey we got this guy he says he's going to work off his
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  time and he can buy from his guy again so some some low-level dude who will then buy from the
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  next level up. Well, once we get a buy off of him, we'll be recording a phone call from that
• 16:50
  informant, that newly turned informant to his supplier. And then when that guy talks, now we
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  will often write what's known as a title three, which is a wiretap. It's called title three.
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  It's from the, uh, I forget what year it was, the omnibus crime bill, but it was title three from
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  that and so now we're going to go up on that phone because we have dirty talk on the phone of the
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  supplier so now we're hooked up to him now we're waiting for him to go after his supplier and we'll
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  take that all the way to the border pass it on to el paso or mcallen texas and now they're up on
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  the cartels does it ever not work out well for these people that turn snitches i never saw guys
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  getting killed because of that because if the i mean it's it's like anything else if if they think
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  you're a snitch they're just gonna walk away and i would have that discussion with other informants
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  like yeah but what if they find out i'm a snitch i'm like dude's gonna act really weird and say
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  i don't want drugs why would you think i have drugs because if they think you're the police
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  they know they're going to get hammered if they harm them.
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  Right.
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  That's interesting too.
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  That kind of breaks down one of the Hollywood theories right there.
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  Not always.
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  Obviously you get into the cartel territory
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  and that's a whole different ballgame.
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  Because then they keep you around if they think you're a snitch
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  and then they go round up your family
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  and now we're going to extract the confession from you.
• 18:33
  Right.
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  And so when we were working high volume drug sale dealers in Chicago, part of our administrative process is we had to connect them to a cartel.
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  And often that was just like, you know, it was internal and it didn't matter legally.
• 18:50
  So we just like look at some phone connections and go, OK, that calls this guy who's connected to this cartel.
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  So, boom, Sinaloa, we'll call it Sinaloa.
• 18:58
  but we'd arrest these guys and we're like oh so like what cartel do you belong to and guys like
• 19:04
  i i don't know i buy from a guy named charlie out of st louis who brings it in from a guy down and
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  you know and who knows who he gets it from but i know that charlie always brings me my dope
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  do you so do you i guess how many of your
• 19:23
  how many of the the people that you've done interrogations on would you say were were
• 19:32
  more open about that as opposed to completely blocked off and opposed and just shut it down
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  so give me a lawyer yeah so i i'm almost well i i can't say almost always i'm very often
• 19:51
  would get past them wanting a lawyer because they, if you're being arrested, you want to
• 19:59
  make some sense of what's going on. And I would play that up. So once you're arrested,
• 20:05
  I'm going to treat you nice, but also I'll tell you that if you want an opportunity to understand
• 20:12
  what your situation is, there's going to have to be some talking back and forth. Well, in order for
• 20:18
  me to be able to do that with you, I need you to waive your rights. You can refuse to answer
• 20:25
  anything I ask you. That's fine. And I'm affirming this that, look, if you want to stop talking,
• 20:30
  you can stop talking. If you want to not answer my questions, I just ask you to not lie to me,
• 20:36
  but instead say I'd rather not answer that. But nobody do that because once we're talking,
• 20:42
  It's rude to say that.
• 20:45
  I mean it just seems stupid But here a guy who looking at prison time But if you bring it to a situation where it seems like it normal conversation they don want to be rude
• 20:58
  And so naturally, they're going to keep talking, even though they shouldn't be telling you something.
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  And even though I've told them, like, hey, you can stop whenever you want.
• 21:08
  You can not answer my questions.
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  most people want to gain some type of control over the situation and i'm offering like look man the
• 21:18
  only way you're going to gain some sort of control is for you to answer some of my questions while i
• 21:23
  answer whatever you have too and that's when i lay out the case and most of them start talking
• 21:28
  but to straight answer your question gang members in chicago yeah those those are the ones they've
• 21:35
  had enough run-ins with the cops where it didn't matter they're not you know they're not talking
• 21:40
  interesting i'm sure the more experienced ones know just to shut up and ask for a lawyer and
• 21:49
  well the the newer guys probably have more of a chance of yeah keeping their their yaps going
• 21:55
  what's funny is like even the gang members would talk they just had zero value like one guy you
• 22:03
  I'm playing cuts from the phone tap we had where he's saying like, yeah, can I get four and a half of the white things?
• 22:11
  And he's like, well, which was ounces of crack.
• 22:15
  And he's like trying to explain to me like, no, man, I wanted four and a half of them white T-shirts that I was going to resell.
• 22:22
  I got half a one.
• 22:24
  You want a half a T-shirt?
• 22:25
  I don't understand.
• 22:26
  Like Brian Bosworth cut off here.
• 22:30
  Maurice Claret, I guess.
• 22:31
  I don't know.
• 22:31
  so you know so they they just waste your time and see what they can get out of you
• 22:36
  but the worst one i ever had was we did this huge gang round up in chicago
• 22:41
  and so i figure i pick up this guy gang member named dorian and i remember his name very well
• 22:48
  so i'm like well i'm gonna start from the beginning so i had a photograph blown up and it was it was
• 22:54
  this and it came from a pin camera from the informant so it's just you know boom i took that
• 23:00
  still shot i go let me start with this and i slid it over him i can you identify this guy
• 23:06
  and he says i don't know i go well it's you obviously and i said like over your shoulder
• 23:15
  you can see the address of the building it's like it's 44 25 and like a lot of drivers like
• 23:22
  like you you live at 44 25 you know 26th place he's like no i don't like it's right here
• 23:30
  and i said look the guy in the picture is wearing a necklace that says doe and you're wearing that
• 23:38
  necklace right now he goes no i ain't well i'm not getting anywhere with you then i guess
• 23:46
  i've met people like that they could just they they lie and they they'll stick with it too until
• 23:52
  the end well yeah i i'm sure you you kind of get adept at picking out whether people are lying to
• 23:58
  you or not with experience well yeah and what's nice is like when we're doing the post-arrest
• 24:04
  interrogation we're just trying to seal it completely so i have enough we're not coming
• 24:09
  to arrest you unless i know i can win the case but like if you confess then we're not even
• 24:15
  bothering with the trial so now it's easy but i had this discussion with a guy who was talking
• 24:20
  about polygraphs and he was saying like oh i don't think polygraphs work and i said well they do to
• 24:25
  a degree, but it's like anything.
• 24:27
  Like if I hook you up to a polygraph
• 24:29
  and I say, hey man,
• 24:31
  when I ask you about
• 24:32
  do you know who killed your
• 24:35
  neighbor and you said no, it seems
• 24:37
  like you're lying. And you could just
• 24:39
  go, okay.
• 24:41
  I don't care.
• 24:43
  I'm telling the truth. And then you can
• 24:45
  continue to lie to me.
• 24:47
  And then when we're done, you're like, all right.
• 24:50
  I don't know
• 24:51
  why people confess, but they do.
• 24:52
  interesting we we had one guy i think i think some people think they're gonna they're gonna
• 24:59
  talk their way out of it somehow well there's a lot i mean the good polygraphers i've got a buddy
• 25:04
  who is like they they know how to use that's a tool that's this is something they know how to
• 25:10
  use in conjunction with their interrogation skills and so you know i say i don't know why people do
• 25:15
  it but i i do and i know how you can get people to there and there's there's a story of a guy who
• 25:21
  came in to apply to be an FBI agent. And one of the questions to him was,
• 25:25
  is there anything that any way that you've broken a law,
• 25:31
  but it hasn't been found out. And he was like,
• 25:35
  I've downloaded child porn. It's on my computer.
• 25:40
  And I think I would just go, Nope,
• 25:43
  I don't need this job that much. But they, then they convinced him to say,
• 25:48
  Like, well, we're going to have to see that and confirm it.
• 25:51
  So you're going to need to bring it in.
• 25:53
  And the next day, like, wow, he's like, yeah, here you go.
• 25:56
  Like people think it's a confessional booth.
• 25:58
  They think, okay, so between you and me, yeah, I've downloaded a lot of child porn.
• 26:04
  But that once I tell you that now, now that's clean, right?
• 26:07
  Now I can go to heaven, you know.
• 26:09
  Unbelievable.
• 26:10
  so going back to kind of the crossover from your your first career i guess yeah uh did you find
• 26:21
  yourself having any i guess okay so before that one did you leave the church and
• 26:29
  give up on that aspect of your life or is that still something that's alive and well with you
• 26:39
  I would say it's alive and well with me as I accept it.
• 26:47
  So I did not leave the church.
• 26:50
  In fact, I preached on Easter Sunday in 2002.
• 26:55
  That was the last time in my church.
• 26:57
  Then I was in Quantico, Virginia the next Sunday.
• 27:01
  And then the Sunday after that, I was preaching in Quantico, Virginia because they didn't have a chaplain and I was filling in for them.
• 27:06
  and then when we got to Chicago, I was part of a church plant there as well to help out,
• 27:13
  had been going to church for years, but just circumstances in my life, I have readjusted
• 27:20
  my valuation of how my faith works and how the church works, which is fine to get into if you
• 27:28
  want, but it's not that exciting. No, the reason I'm asking is going from that to the next question,
• 27:37
  right? Interrogation. No, I'm kidding. I would be a terrible interrogator, I think. But so it helps
• 27:46
  me with, do I want to ask this next question? But now I think I do is, did you find yourself
• 27:51
  coming across moral conundrums, things where you're like, morally, I don't accept this as
• 27:58
  being okay, but I need to do it as part of my job role. And if so, how did you handle that? How did
• 28:04
  you make that, you know, acceptable and okay? Well, I hope this is boring, but reassuring,
• 28:12
  but I never did. Anything that we engaged with in the FBI was signed off, like so many checks up our
• 28:22
  own chain, but also ultimately signed off by a judge. And so the most intrusive things we could
• 28:30
  do would be, you know, search warrant at your home where now the public knows, you know, all your
• 28:36
  neighbors know something's going on or tapping your phone, which is highly intrusive. Like you
• 28:41
  think you're just talking freely and however we're listening. And that all felt fine because
• 28:47
  authorities had said, I agree, you have the right to do this. And along with that,
• 28:56
  the agents that I interacted with were ones who not only wanted to uphold the law,
• 29:04
  but would want to do things right.
• 29:08
  So there weren't cases that I came across where guys were saying,
• 29:13
  well, let's kind of push the envelope here as far as what's right and wrong
• 29:18
  and see what we can get done.
• 29:20
  We tried to stay – we didn't try.
• 29:22
  We stayed within the limits of what is proper to do.
• 29:26
  So there are things that we might come across as an opportunity,
• 29:29
  but I would have talks with agents like, yeah, I just don't feel right doing that.
• 29:34
  I don't know that I want to push this case.
• 29:40
  And emblematic of that is I was working with a guy from a different division because my informant had connections to his subject.
• 29:50
  And so as this guy was talking to my informant, he says to him, and we're trying to get in on a kid who was likely to kill a lot of people.
• 30:00
  and my buddy says hey when you get in there don't be pushing the issues you let him drive it
• 30:09
  don't be trying to entrap him don't be trying to make a case for us we want to know if he is going
• 30:15
  to be violent we don't want to make him that guy and and i remember thinking that's exactly what i
• 30:21
  would say we want him to show us who he is not for us to create a great headline of how we got
• 30:27
  another terrorist we want to find out the honest truth of is this someone who's a threat to safety
• 30:35
  and i think that is that's the sign of us trying to do what is morally right too
• 30:41
  okay yeah i was thinking a lot smaller than that right so um here's a simple one right uh you know
• 30:50
  biblically being untruthful, even in the, you know, aspect of just leaving out information
• 31:03
  to make it seem like it might be something else is biblically not thought of as okay.
• 31:10
  I don't know that there's any scripture that counters that, right?
• 31:14
  That says, oh, but in this circumstance, you can lie.
• 31:17
  Yeah, if you're law enforcement, it's fine.
• 31:19
  and then and then the lord sayeth but if you're a cop right and so i guess i was thinking a lot
• 31:25
  smaller right like you know oh are you an fbi agent no of course not and and i guess morally for
• 31:31
  for for me i think that that would be something where it's like you know i'm i'm actively lying
• 31:38
  and you know yeah no that i'm glad you pointed that out because that's not what i thought of
• 31:44
  And I know I have lied to people in my job just because I must have.
• 31:52
  And it didn't stand out to me.
• 31:54
  However, I would not as a practice lie to the criminals because we're allowed to.
• 32:03
  You know, I can tell – as long as it's not manipulative in a way where I would threaten, you know, like you're going to get the electric chair for this.
• 32:11
  Or we're going to take away your children if you don't confess.
• 32:14
  So that you can't do.
• 32:17
  But I can say things like we have two witnesses who put you at the scene of the crime, things like that.
• 32:25
  I never did that because if I got caught doing it, it wasn't a moral reason.
• 32:31
  But if I got caught doing that, then I've blown the actual evidence that I have.
• 32:37
  So my case is good enough.
• 32:38
  I don't have to waste it on making things up.
• 32:41
  And I feel like all of that came through to a degree as authentic that if I'm being honest, it's just easier to talk.
• 32:51
  I don't have to try to keep, you know, that's your job as the criminal.
• 32:56
  That's your job to struggle trying to keep your story straight because you're trying to remember which one is actually the right one.
• 33:02
  I don't want to have to do that.
• 33:04
  I want you to be under that pressure, whereas I'm just talking freely.
• 33:09
  Yeah, no, that makes sense.
• 33:10
  That would, you know, it was an interesting one for me when I saw the original pitch.
• 33:17
  I was like, well, how does that work, right?
• 33:19
  I mean, like, well, I'm kind of okay with this now.
• 33:23
  And so for me, you know, the moral conundrum comes up for me to kind of, you know, grind through my own brain.
• 33:31
  How does that fit, you know, in my mind?
• 33:33
  Because we all like to do that, right?
• 33:35
  you personalize whatever it is you're thinking about and think about how would I be or how would
• 33:40
  it be for me to be in this situation yeah I think when I've been asked that before I was always
• 33:45
  thinking that people are like are you okay with killing somebody I'm like well I don't want to
• 33:49
  but you know there are situations but yeah that's a good one about lying and I can tell you I do
• 33:55
  remember one time I did lie and it was to a pedophile when he caught us trying to uh interview
• 34:00
  his girlfriend as a witness and we told him we were there as insurance adjusters.
• 34:11
  Nice.
• 34:12
  But I'm going to rationalize that in my head that we were protecting the girlfriend.
• 34:18
  So there we go.
• 34:21
  You probably were.
• 34:22
  Yeah.
• 34:23
  So awesome.
• 34:24
  So on your book, is it primarily just a collection of stories?
• 34:31
  Is there kind of a – yes?
• 34:34
  So I start out with the idea – like if you took the sense of what the whole book is, imagine if there is a crazy social scientist who goes to his colleagues and says,
• 34:48
  hey, I want to see what happens if we pulled this Baptist pastor out of church and we put him in the FBI.
• 34:55
  He's never handled a gun before, too.
• 34:57
  That would be great, wouldn't it?
• 34:59
  And then somebody else pipes up and is like, let's put him on the SWAT team eventually.
• 35:02
  Like, yeah, that's a good idea.
• 35:04
  And so there's just this spread of like, I'm just a guy.
• 35:08
  I'm just the unlikeliest feller who was in the FBI.
• 35:15
  I'm pretty smart.
• 35:16
  I was pretty fit.
• 35:18
  But the idea of like, really, a Baptist pastor?
• 35:21
  That's crazy.
• 35:22
  This is what I got to do.
• 35:24
  So, yeah, here's a story.
• 35:26
  I had sent you one of the chapters.
• 35:28
  Here's the story of when I got to interrogate a pastor who was involved in a ring of pastors that were sex trafficking teenage girl.
• 35:39
  And, you know, how did that go?
• 35:41
  So in each chapter, it's this is the case I worked on.
• 35:45
  This is the case I was a part of.
• 35:48
  And then the thread through that of what happened.
• 35:52
  And then I finish up with what we often do in military or law enforcement is an after
• 35:59
  action review, which is considering, hey, what went well and why?
• 36:03
  How do we screw up?
• 36:04
  What do we need to change?
• 36:06
  And so even with each of those investigations or these stories going back to look at it
• 36:12
  then from that lens of here's a guy who used to be a minister.
• 36:15
  And now I'm thinking of how that work out.
• 36:18
  very cool so did you actually connect those two in in the book like you know i i tried to i tried
• 36:27
  to have the idea of you know i begin with my story so here's me i'm a i'm a pastor here's some of the
• 36:35
  stuff here's what i went through here's some funny anecdotes the first sermon i ever preached i was in
• 36:41
  Jamestown, New York and Western New York and very conservative Baptist church.
• 36:50
  Very, very conservative, very old.
• 36:52
  And I was their first associate pastor.
• 36:56
  So senior pastor says, hey, I'm going to be away on this day.
• 37:00
  I need you to preach on this chapter.
• 37:04
  Well, pastor was going like chapter by chapter through the Bible.
• 37:08
  and he says, this is going to be the passage I want you to preach on
• 37:12
  because it's the one that falls on when I'm out.
• 37:14
  I go, okay.
• 37:14
  So I look at it and the passage is entitled,
• 37:20
  God gives the right of circumcision to Moses.
• 37:24
  I'm like, fantastic.
• 37:26
  The first sermon I preach is on circumcision?
• 37:31
  So I go to my wife and I'm like, hey, I'm thinking of opening with a joke.
• 37:38
  Tell me if you think I should do this.
• 37:41
  I'm going to say, Pastor Cook asked me to speak about circumcision today.
• 37:48
  The message is kind of long, so I took a bit off the end.
• 37:54
  My wife says, I don't think you should tell that joke.
• 37:58
  And so I didn't.
• 37:59
  But then I realized if I couldn't tell dick jokes in church, was I really free to be myself?
• 38:08
  the great awakening that's it and that's when i realized i have to join the fbi instead
• 38:13
  we're we're yeah okay dick dick jokes yeah they they flow freely yes
• 38:22
  how interesting is it when you have to or you had to investigate crimes like that in your former
• 38:29
  profession or or even in the law enforcement i'm sure there's corruption and and you know that kind
• 38:35
  of activity and that did you ever have to investigate any police corruption yeah i was
• 38:40
  i worked uh civil rights and public corruption in chicago and so my one of the cases i had uh was
• 38:50
  actually a historic case my buddy jake owned the case but i was number two on it and it was
• 38:59
  investigating john burge who was a chicago police commander who had for decades he and his team
• 39:06
  had tortured uh suspects to get confessions out of them and i mean it was historic like this is
• 39:15
  i mean it's not that big a deal like there's books written about it there's you can go on
• 39:20
  wikipedia and look up john burge to me yeah no i mean a big deal in that like this was known in
• 39:26
  Chicago that here is a guy who almost exclusively, if not exclusively, the victims that he tortured
• 39:34
  were black men. And so this was a case that we were working 15 to 25 years after the fact.
• 39:44
  So we're long past the time where he had tortured them. And just five years prior to when we got a
• 39:52
  conviction, John Burge had stated in federal civil court while he's being sued by one of the victims
• 39:59
  that he knew nothing about torture in area two of Chicago. And so just like Elliot Ness,
• 40:08
  we got him on perjury and obstruction of justice. But we're interviewing these victims like
• 40:16
  many years later, they'd already served their sentence. They're already out and they're
• 40:22
  telling stories about how they were tortured how they're beaten to get a confession do you ever
• 40:28
  give it never quite seems like they get the justice that they deserve when they're public
• 40:32
  officials or police it's usually like oh you have to resign yeah and get your full pension and maybe
• 40:38
  move to a different agency that seems to be the the biggest consensus on that well and with john
• 40:43
  burge like this was like he he was already retired he was an old man so he got to live out his life
• 40:49
  and I mean in the end he got I think maybe four and a half years for 20 years of torture and abuse
• 40:59
  it wasn't justice but the Chicago PD had turned a blind eye he was doing a great job so they're
• 41:07
  going to just dismiss the rumors and the reports and the friggin FBI didn't do their job either
• 41:13
  until many years later. So in circumstances like that, one of the things always pops up to my mind
• 41:23
  is leading in with what you kind of ended with there. How much pushback is, I imagine there's
• 41:30
  in certain cases where they look at that and they go dude if you do this all these people are gonna sue us How much pushback do you get from above on cases like that Say Hey you know be careful or you better you know whatever Yeah So there a
• 41:49
  saying in the Bureau of big cases, big problems, small cases, small problems. And if you're,
• 41:54
  if you're going after a, a case that's, that, you know, will make headlines,
• 42:01
  there's a lot of people eyeballing it and there's folks who are going to that are like people you
• 42:07
  haven't met before you know as an agent are going to start getting involved and giving input and
• 42:13
  it's most of what we do doesn't like here's a guy i proved he's a criminal we take him down
• 42:22
  arrest him no problem and then there's a few like that where you know somebody from headquarters
• 42:28
  is debriefed on it and then they start pushing back or directing and that's just the worst thing
• 42:34
  no agent wants that that's their nightmare yeah that doesn't matter who's like in the white house
• 42:41
  at the time or who the head of the fbi is and what cases get pushed at that time i'm sure there's some
• 42:47
  kind of political aspect to that office because even in the local sheriff's offices it's a political
• 42:53
  aspect. Well, it's more political in the local sheriff's office for sure.
• 42:58
  There is, there's trickle down to the field in, to a degree, the great majority of what
• 43:06
  agents do is just like the same as always. Like I can only work cases that my informants bring me
• 43:12
  or, you know, bad guys that I see. I can't, I can't manufacture stuff. So as an example,
• 43:19
  during Black Lives Matter protests and such, Trump's first term, we were, Jeff Sessions,
• 43:28
  the attorney general, saying, hey, let's look at Antifa and see if they're trying to create
• 43:34
  violence or destruction of property. I said, okay, let's see. And we're trying to find these
• 43:40
  guys, at least in our area, they're not there. They're not talking about organizing. And so
• 43:47
  So there can be like an emphasis or like a push for something.
• 43:54
  But again, like you can have guys saying, we want to wipe out Antifa.
• 43:59
  And then I'll come back with, yeah, my informants have nothing.
• 44:04
  Like they're talking to these guys.
• 44:06
  Like can't charge them if they don't break the law.
• 44:10
  so some more of like a general directional type of a push then like you need to do the this yeah a
• 44:19
  flavor you know uh um you know somebody's putting like a pinky on the scale of saying
• 44:23
  maybe a little more of this yeah it's a little bit before your time but how would something like
• 44:30
  like waco or ruby ridge get escalated to what happened in those situations is it just like one
• 44:35
  guy picks up like a tip or something and it just kind of moves from there?
• 44:40
  Yeah.
• 44:41
  I mean, obviously it's so much different now because, you know, we've got the internet,
• 44:46
  we've got the National Threat Operations Center where things come in.
• 44:50
  But the way that cases are made are, you know, whether an informant brings us something
• 44:57
  or we task him to look into a new group or a person to see if there's violence there.
• 45:05
  call comes in from a neighbor who sees something. We might even get it from the newspaper where
• 45:12
  you see a deal being done and people talking about suspicious change of money. So we'll look
• 45:20
  into things and then there's kind of different levels. There's a full investigation where
• 45:26
  we're going all in and then there's kind of these assessments where we're going to look at it. We
• 45:34
  We have limited legal authority, and we want to see if there is something here that we can now move up to another level.
• 45:48
  Interesting.
• 45:50
  If you want to know more, you can ask more, but that's a general way of things go.
• 45:54
  I'm just thinking, so the FBI knocks at my door or Havoc's door.
• 45:59
  What should we say?
• 46:01
  Meet feet?
• 46:01
  I'm not talking to you.
• 46:04
  Well, I mean, I always say this.
• 46:07
  I read some Reddit comment where people are like, if the FBI ever shows up, you should say this.
• 46:15
  I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 46:16
  If the FBI shows up, they're probably a criminal.
• 46:19
  Why are you telling guys?
• 46:21
  Don't you want these people off the street?
• 46:24
  But I mean, obviously, if it were me, and you guys can be smart enough too.
• 46:31
  Like I know what to not say.
• 46:34
  And I just always tell people just be polite.
• 46:37
  So if somebody asked me a question, I'm like, yeah, I don't want to answer that.
• 46:41
  Is there something else I can help you with?
• 46:43
  Cause I mean, hell, the guy might be there saying, yeah, I just wanted to let you know
• 46:47
  that there's a murderer on the loose and we're looking for him in the woods behind your house.
• 46:51
  Like, and then, you know, you come to the door and say, get the hell out of here.
• 46:56
  And you're like, okay, best of luck there, buddy.
• 47:01
  Yeah. What was your favorite as far as training goes, right? Physical training in the FBI. What was your favorite part?
• 47:12
  uh so we had SWAT training regularly and being a part of that like just doing it a
• 47:23
  close quarter battle training CQB training that's that's it's like learning line dancing
• 47:31
  where guys are going through and you've done this enough where one moves two moves three moves four
• 47:37
  moves, five's at the door ready to move, you know, and, and this guy gets out of place,
• 47:41
  is exposed.
• 47:42
  And then that guy jumps in and you look at it like, I mean, I kind of feel a little tingly.
• 47:47
  Like we would go to like abandoned, we get permission and we go to like abandoned hospital
• 47:53
  or school and we do a cold run where we've never seen it.
• 47:58
  And we'd hit this complex room with so many danger areas.
• 48:03
  and we do that and I just go, oh, that was cool.
• 48:09
  And being a part of it, then you appreciate it even more of like, oh, wow, we can solve this.
• 48:15
  And solving it in the tactical sense is everybody protecting the next guy
• 48:21
  and making people as safe as they can.
• 48:25
  So when I would teach tactics to other agents,
• 48:28
  one thing i regularly said is tactics is about being a buddy so that if your buddy's in a place
• 48:35
  where he's exposed hey i'm gonna be a buddy and i'm gonna cover your back with my gun and plates
• 48:41
  so that you're safer and now if that exposes me then this guy's gonna be a buddy something i've
• 48:49
  always wondered about like the whole you know you know breaching right uh
• 48:56
  obviously there are circumstances, right?
• 49:01
  You start talking about HRT, different concept, right?
• 49:06
  There's an immediate and urgent need that this has to happen, right?
• 49:10
  Otherwise, you're potentially going to lose a lot of lives, right?
• 49:16
  Whereas in a lot of cases, I look at these and I go,
• 49:20
  look, I mean, right off the bat, CQB is well-known,
• 49:24
  well known as the most dangerous type of battle with the highest mortality rate because you're
• 49:31
  going into a floor plan you may have a floor plan you may even have an outline of what it looks like
• 49:38
  in most of the house but you could be coming in where there are multiple armed people with
• 49:43
  very high caliber weapons that you know i mean you're you're stacking up in a hallway right
• 49:49
  Because that's the only way to get to a door. And next thing you know, you know, big rounds are coming your way. What is the, I mean, what is the, the reasoning behind some of this? I've always wondered why not just camp out and wait for this person to be out at their mailbox or wait for this person to be somewhere that's more isolated, a takedown in that manner so that you're not, you know, risking the lives of the agents as well as
• 50:19
  potentially innocent people inside of a dwelling?
• 50:23
  No, that's a good question.
• 50:25
  And that is often what we do.
• 50:28
  So even as a SWAT team, so if a subject hits a certain threshold on a matrix to say, he's
• 50:36
  this dangerous.
• 50:36
  And so that might be criminal history, cameras, guns, a number of things.
• 50:43
  Maybe it's the terrain, then SWAT's going to get called.
• 50:48
  so they're the most dangerous guys and we go because we've got better equipment we've got
• 50:53
  more tools and of course as we talked about more training smoother and faster and the first thing
• 51:00
  that we do and the first thing that agents do all agents is we set up a tactical l where we've got
• 51:05
  all our fields of fire covered we we've got we can call out anybody exiting and then we announce
• 51:15
  our presence and try to have them come out to us where we're behind some type of ballistic
• 51:21
  barrier, you know, whether it's a vehicle or in a bearcat, an armored bearcat.
• 51:29
  And the people who know what they're doing look outside, see 15 guys with rifles and lasers on
• 51:36
  windows, and they realize I have one choice, and that is to give up. And so we may get a barricaded
• 51:43
  subject at times, but for the most part, and we have ways to mitigate that.
• 51:48
  But guys, you know, we've had plenty of guys where we see them in the window and they're
• 51:54
  peering out and then they come out and we get upstairs and we see a gun on the table
• 51:58
  next to that window where he's ready to go.
• 52:02
  He sees he's not going to make it.
• 52:04
  He's got one choice.
• 52:06
  So that is often what we do.
• 52:08
  We're trying to do that.
• 52:10
  And then we're also porting windows, sending in drones so that they can see, okay, here's an approach.
• 52:17
  Now we can breach where the breacher is going to be safer.
• 52:20
  It's less likely to catch fire.
• 52:23
  I was a breacher on our SWAT team, and I would often tell the guys I'm the most important person on the team because if I don't get that door open, we can't get the job done.
• 52:35
  and I'm also the least valuable because here I am standing in front of a door
• 52:40
  with a ram in my hands with my side exposed, you know, for a couple seconds, hopefully.
• 52:48
  Interesting. I guess, you know, story time. What would be the, and maybe you can't say,
• 52:57
  and that's okay as well, but what would be the worst breach and entry that you had?
• 53:05
  how bad was it and if you can't talk about that's acceptable no we can talk about it uh
• 53:10
  i i was a young breacher and we hit the front door and it took me probably eight swings
• 53:19
  because the front door is where they put the couch and i'm like that's pretty impressive like
• 53:29
  eight swings and I breached the door and moved the couch. Um, you know, so I remember like,
• 53:35
  I'm probably five swings in and my, and my team leader's like, Hey, give it up, give it up. I'm
• 53:40
  like, Nope. I'm, I can feel it. I'm getting there. So that was a rough one. I had one of my buddies,
• 53:45
  JB, Oh dude, he, he hit, I think we're in Pittsburgh and he hit the door and came back
• 53:53
  And he was swinging so hard and fast, he hit his forearm against the door jam.
• 54:00
  And he had like a knot like this.
• 54:04
  And it wasn't broken.
• 54:06
  It was just a massive muscle contusion.
• 54:09
  And he sat down and got a little pale, you know, after that.
• 54:14
  Oh, yeah.
• 54:14
  And then I had a buddy in Cincinnati division who came up to breach a door.
• 54:20
  and also hit the door jam like in his wrist.
• 54:29
  And so after he busted it, he came out and said, like, hey, I'm out.
• 54:32
  You know, I hit my wrist.
• 54:34
  And it wasn't until they took him into the ambulance that they realized he'd been shot.
• 54:41
  So as he was at the front door, guys didn't know it was the police and, you know,
• 54:46
  popped around from the couch and then went, oh, and then hid the gun.
• 54:50
  And, you know, nobody's saying anything. They're not going to say anything either. But yeah, very fortunate. He just got shot in the wrist and that was it.
• 54:57
  Wow. Have you ever had a circumstance where a, what would you call them, a perpetrator, I guess, have you ever had an instance where after the fact, maybe years go by, they get out, et cetera, and you get a phone call from them thanking you for saving their life or anything like that?
• 55:22
  Uh, I, I have not. They usually aren't going to try to look up the guys to put them away. I did have one guy we arrested, um, for, um, possession with intent to distribute cocaine.
• 55:39
  and I remember like he said hey who's got a flashlight I'm gonna show you how I have no
• 55:46
  nose left like I'm gonna stick it up there and like I believe you buddy and he thanked us like
• 55:51
  he was a nice guy and he said hey I just want to let you guys know I was not selling cocaine
• 55:57
  I'm not fighting the charges but he goes I used it all you know and it was a large amount and his
• 56:04
  whole point was like, I use so much, I have no septum left. And he just goes, this is going to
• 56:09
  be good for me. It's like, it was, that was his attitude. It was like, yep, this is the best thing
• 56:14
  that happened to me. I need this. I'm glad I'm going away. So that was remarkable. And I had
• 56:21
  one father thank me for executing a search warrant and arresting his son because he couldn't control
• 56:29
  him and he was pretty sure and the reason we were there is that his kid would be a mass shooter
• 56:36
  sometime so he had hidden guns that his son had purchased because he was afraid he's going to kill
• 56:42
  people and now on the flip side do you ever worry about people that may not be as grateful for your
• 56:51
  services and do you feel like it kind of because you're out there a lot now doing all these podcasts
• 56:58
  and your name's out there.
• 57:00
  Do you ever worry about your family or anything like that?
• 57:04
  Like anybody doing anything like that?
• 57:05
  The kid I just mentioned.
• 57:07
  So that kid I mentioned, he goes away.
• 57:12
  He went away for a year.
• 57:15
  I mean, I just hit him with gun charges because he had been institutionalized
• 57:19
  against his will.
• 57:20
  So there's a box on the form you got to check.
• 57:24
  And he lied.
• 57:25
  So put him away for a year.
• 57:28
  And as soon as he got out, I talked to his – he started, like, contacting me or, like, trying to harass me.
• 57:36
  Definitely not over the line.
• 57:38
  So, like, he wasn't – it wasn't threats, but you got the sense.
• 57:43
  I talked to his therapist, his counselor at the halfway house, and he goes,
• 57:49
  I have worked with death row inmates for 20 years.
• 57:52
  I've never been as afraid of a subject as I have of this kid.
• 57:58
  And so because of him, every day when I parked my bureau vehicle, it was in a public garage in the building adjacent to where we worked.
• 58:10
  I would get out and the first thing I would do would be look around before like I'm turning my back and putting my head down because I figured he's going to pop out at some point.
• 58:24
  Wow.
• 58:26
  Yeah, that's I mean, that's a lot to live.
• 58:28
  Hanging over your head.
• 58:29
  Worry about that kind of stuff, though.
• 58:31
  It was more – it was less of like hanging over my head and worrying, and it was more of like, well, there's no point in being stupid.
• 58:39
  Like let's give a look.
• 58:41
  So I wasn't like – again, like compared to being a pastor, that didn't stress me, which is crazy because I wasn't going through anything that normal pastors don't deal with.
• 58:54
  I wasn't special, and it wasn't extra hard.
• 58:57
  I just couldn't handle it.
• 58:58
  And here's a kid that I thought, maybe he'll kill me someday.
• 59:01
  I'm like, yeah, okay.
• 59:03
  I should look around first.
• 59:05
  And it didn't bother me.
• 59:07
  That's crazy.
• 59:08
  I mean, like I know I'm pretty careful.
• 59:12
  I don't even put my name out there.
• 59:14
  And I'm just some schmo doing the silly podcast.
• 59:17
  I'm nobody.
• 59:18
  Yeah.
• 59:19
  I've never put anybody in jail for any time.
• 59:22
  I kind of had to talk him into it, to be honest with you.
• 59:24
  Good.
• 59:25
  He doesn't like podcasts.
• 59:26
  so stay on that side that's good i so the for me the one positive is and i'm pretty sure i haven't
• 59:36
  googled myself lately but i would occasionally do that just to see if there's something that pops up
• 59:41
  make sure people can identify where i live or something and i think the one thing that would
• 59:45
  come up if you put in eric robinson fbi was a time that um a white kid uh but a pimp
• 59:54
  in a cutoff shirt he was one of the guys buying four and a half shirts i probably he bought the
• 1:00:00
  half so he had a cutoff shirt and and track pants we had arrested him after this long operation
• 1:00:08
  and he's like oh i i can give you anybody like i can do all these buys and i'm like look man
• 1:00:14
  i gave him my business card i said you come back monday and you call me or we're just going to
• 1:00:20
  charge you and you better have some real information. And then I totally forgot about
• 1:00:24
  him until one day, um, the, the manager of a local sports chain, uh, sports bar came by
• 1:00:33
  and asked for me and he goes, Oh, so you're Eric Robinson. So what had happened is I gave the guy
• 1:00:40
  my business card said, you call me this kid and his, uh, girlfriend prostitute went down the street
• 1:00:47
  show this guy had balls this big to do this shows a business card and says i'm eric robinson with
• 1:00:55
  the fbi i gotta debrief this informant and he made off with like 85 dollars in appetizers and drinks
• 1:01:03
  and this dude thought that was an fbi agent like some some 20 year old kid in track suit
• 1:01:10
  um so i think that guy stealing my identity and the and the charges against him are about the only
• 1:01:18
  thing you'll find on me in the in the google i'll have to google my stuff i mean talking about
• 1:01:23
  appearances i i probably wouldn't have pegged you as an fbi agent if you know if i didn't know i'd
• 1:01:28
  say like construction foreman or maybe auto mechanic or lumberjack i don't know there we go
• 1:01:33
  Something.
• 1:01:34
  FBI agent probably would have been the last thing on my mind.
• 1:01:37
  It's the flannel.
• 1:01:38
  Yeah.
• 1:01:38
  When I would do trainings for other police departments, or we would often do this large one for the Ohio Tactical Officers Association, and I'd give everybody one shot.
• 1:01:53
  I'd have this FBI patch, and I said, if you can guess what I used to do, I'll give you a patch before I got in the bureau.
• 1:02:00
  and by that time I'd had told a few dirty jokes and you know things like that and you know I'd go
• 1:02:06
  around and I'd get lumberjack and you know guys are like you're in the military I'm like why would
• 1:02:12
  that be unique like what why would I go I'll give you a patch if you can guess I was in the military
• 1:02:19
  like that stupid and but I did have a guy get it wow nice I imagine it was a pretty interesting like again in my head I putting myself in this position I walk into my first interview they pull up my resume and so you you know you at
• 1:02:44
  the FBI, right?
• 1:02:46
  Okay.
• 1:02:47
  And you're, you, pastor?
• 1:02:50
  Yeah.
• 1:02:51
  I mean, how did that go?
• 1:02:52
  I gotta imagine.
• 1:02:53
  I have a feeling that it has a lot to do with personality and being able to be kind of a social chameleon because you seem pretty affable and able to move in conversations with different people or you wouldn't be doing these podcasts.
• 1:03:06
  Well, I can.
• 1:03:08
  And I don't know.
• 1:03:09
  So I'll say this.
• 1:03:10
  Now in being able to converse with people, also being able to listen to them, which obviously I'm trying to do as a pastor, is very significant.
• 1:03:21
  so after the fact I think it paid off I don't know having been around applicant coordinators
• 1:03:27
  I don't know if they're that's always in their fourth order of their mind but when I applied
• 1:03:31
  keep this in mind I applied in 2001 my applications in process September comes around and my background
• 1:03:42
  was studying to be a missionary to Muslims so here's someone who has worked with Muslims talked
• 1:03:48
  with them, understands the culture and religion, and then 9-11, and let's put this guy through.
• 1:03:55
  So at least that got me in the door. I take the first test, which is like an SAT type test,
• 1:04:02
  and I took it, and I remember going, well, I tried. And then they called me back. I'm like,
• 1:04:08
  I don't know if you scored the test right here. And then the next parts were written
• 1:04:13
  and verbal like an interview where you've got to tell hey tell a time where you
• 1:04:18
  had to overcome something you know what were the results what did you do
• 1:04:22
  and at that point i knew okay i know how to talk
• 1:04:25
  now i feel comfortable and you got the the fit test and i was
• 1:04:30
  in good shape at the time so you know after i got through those first couple
• 1:04:35
  i'm like okay i think i can do this
• 1:04:37
  they do a polygraph and all that stuff too right that's part of it
• 1:04:43
  Yeah, and that was – my pants were soaked when I was done.
• 1:04:47
  Like it's a lot of – it's rough.
• 1:04:51
  And this is where – this is great.
• 1:04:53
  On your podcast, I will now announce I lied so much on the polygraph and I got past him.
• 1:04:59
  The guy was terrible.
• 1:05:00
  Really?
• 1:05:01
  Does that mean you're a psychopath or what does that mean?
• 1:05:03
  You're just a good liar.
• 1:05:05
  Just a good liar.
• 1:05:06
  Just a good – no, I mean it was rough.
• 1:05:10
  And I remember like being really stressed that I wasn't getting past until he came back with like, I'm having a lot of trouble on here with, are you working with another government?
• 1:05:21
  I'm like, oh, okay.
• 1:05:23
  If that's the one we're having a hard time with, I'm going to calm down because I'm not.
• 1:05:30
  Well, that's a good point.
• 1:05:31
  Or are you?
• 1:05:32
  Or am I?
• 1:05:33
  I don't have to answer your question.
• 1:05:36
  I don't answer questions.
• 1:05:37
  Well, this is your opportunity to tell your side of the story.
• 1:05:40
  Because if you don't tell your side of the story, we only have one side.
• 1:05:43
  We have to make our decision to arrest you based on that.
• 1:05:46
  You're so good.
• 1:05:47
  You're so good.
• 1:05:48
  Who taught you that?
• 1:05:50
  Secret agent man.
• 1:05:54
  My wife watches too many of those interrogation videos.
• 1:05:58
  Yeah.
• 1:05:59
  Which is bad for me because she's a master of the read technique.
• 1:06:03
  And I have no escape.
• 1:06:06
  I can't lie to her.
• 1:06:07
  whatsoever. So I don't, there's always aspects that work and don't work. I don't like the read
• 1:06:13
  technique because part of that is shutting you down. So if you start like one, it's you use
• 1:06:22
  ruses all the time, which I don't like. I don't like ruses and telling lies and like trying to
• 1:06:29
  see what works. And also if you start telling me things I don't want to hear and go against
• 1:06:35
  my beliefs, then I shut you down and bring you back to no, no, no, no. Answer my question the
• 1:06:41
  way I want you to. That's terrible. And so as a pastor, I did this as an FBI agent. If you want
• 1:06:48
  to start telling me lies, I'm curious. I'm open, man. Tell me more. And there's a point where I'll
• 1:06:55
  stop you, but I want to hear your lies because if I hear your lies, then I know where you stand.
• 1:07:02
  You're not cooperating.
• 1:07:04
  And secondly, that's probably going to be your defense.
• 1:07:08
  Like when you start going through this.
• 1:07:11
  And how do I know I know I'm right?
• 1:07:14
  So if I tell you like, hey, LX, I know you killed your neighbor.
• 1:07:22
  We had people who saw you do it.
• 1:07:24
  And you say, I didn't kill him.
• 1:07:25
  I didn't kill him.
• 1:07:26
  And I start shutting you down and say, no, no, no, no.
• 1:07:28
  You killed him.
• 1:07:29
  And we have people who – however, if I say we have people who saw you kill your neighbor and you say, I didn't do it, now I'm curious.
• 1:07:38
  And you go, he came at me with a rake and I tried to get away.
• 1:07:43
  And as he swung, I pushed him and he fell and hit a rock.
• 1:07:47
  So now I'm hearing what might be the truth or a bigger story.
• 1:07:52
  So tell your wife to stop using the read technique.
• 1:07:56
  I tell the truth because it's much easier to –
• 1:07:59
  we'll just tell the truth there's that too if you tell the truth you ain't got to remember nothing
• 1:08:05
  it's really easy the truth shall set me free amen yep well awesome so what would you say
• 1:08:14
  what would you say was the the thing you least liked about being in the fbi
• 1:08:21
  and you can't say paperwork you can't say no i wasn't i wasn't gonna say paperwork
• 1:08:25
  uh well i i will say this
• 1:08:31
  knowing that bad that criminals uh are going to not be brought to justice so i can have a case
• 1:08:42
  let me just say this i had a case on a guy who was stealing money so a white collar financial case
• 1:08:48
  and his accountant helped him in it.
• 1:08:54
  His attorney helped move money around.
• 1:08:58
  His first business partner,
• 1:09:01
  the two of them took $9 million from investors back in 1997
• 1:09:06
  and those three guys were not charged.
• 1:09:09
  Another attorney helped him put forward fake bond deals.
• 1:09:14
  He wasn't charged.
• 1:09:16
  That's the worst.
• 1:09:16
  so you know this guy got charged and four others got charged too and that here's these guys that
• 1:09:23
  i know are criminals i know they broke the law and oopy doopy i guess that's the way it goes
• 1:09:31
  so that's the worst you guys have ever anybody tried to bribe you and say hey you can uh
• 1:09:36
  take this uh big stack of cash and make this disappear for me no but you know what i remember
• 1:09:43
  We'd have discussions about that because I would tell people, like, I mean, I can't think of how much money it would have to be because it'd have to be a lot.
• 1:09:54
  I don't want to live my life thinking, oh, my gosh, what, you know, am I going to be found out?
• 1:09:58
  I'm a crook.
• 1:10:00
  Like, we're talking about millions.
• 1:10:03
  So if somebody had millions, I might be open to it.
• 1:10:07
  But, you know, it's just so much to give up, like, for your integrity and just sense of well-being that I got to be able to just be set and walk away.
• 1:10:18
  So, no, never had that.
• 1:10:21
  But I did once with another agent we carried, I think it was like $560,000 in cash to the Federal Reserve that we had seized off a guy.
• 1:10:32
  Wow.
• 1:10:32
  Did it feel like a lot of money?
• 1:10:33
  It was a few duffel bags.
• 1:10:35
  that's like all in 20s like big ones yeah oh it was big yeah that's that's definitely a lot of
• 1:10:43
  money yeah that's a lot of money oh real lot of money that's that's real money you know yeah yeah
• 1:10:52
  in cash did your friends from the irs come looking for their cut so you're well you're like hey we're
• 1:10:58
  gonna take this million and a half dollars to the federal reserve and you get there and you're like
• 1:11:03
  yeah, man, we got this million dollars and can you put this $560,000 in the locker for us?
• 1:11:09
  Because we just got this $560,000, no?
• 1:11:13
  560-ish, $540,000.
• 1:11:17
  So what's crazy is the guy who headed up our forfeiture unit in Chicago had so many bank complaints written about him
• 1:11:26
  because gang arrest, dope arrest, whatever, we'd seize the money.
• 1:11:32
  and then hand it over to the Federal Reserve to be forfeited.
• 1:11:39
  And then there'd be like $1,000 of counterfeit money in there.
• 1:11:43
  But his name was on it, so they'd write a report.
• 1:11:45
  It was done administratively, not to actually file a complaint,
• 1:11:49
  but it would say on this day, even though it might be me,
• 1:11:54
  but it was in this guy's name,
• 1:11:56
  so-and-so brought $1,000 worth of counterfeit funds to our bank.
• 1:12:02
  because they had to report it.
• 1:12:05
  Wow.
• 1:12:07
  Yeah, we're not even going to bring up the civil asset forfeiture thing,
• 1:12:11
  because I know that's probably a sore subject with some of our posts here.
• 1:12:15
  Yeah.
• 1:12:16
  Well, I'll just say this.
• 1:12:18
  These guys were all pretty high-end dope dealers.
• 1:12:22
  So it wasn't – and I get where you're coming from.
• 1:12:27
  um so this wasn't the guy who's like you know we pull you over like prove that you went to casino
• 1:12:33
  and we're going to take this right so you can so yeah we didn't do that i saw one of the guy had
• 1:12:39
  he had bank receipts for it all and they still took it he had to fight it for a couple years in
• 1:12:43
  court yeah it seems a bit unfair to me no it is it definitely is no we caught you on a phone tap
• 1:12:51
  selling dope. So definitely, definitely no. Yeah. Right. That's a whole different ball game.
• 1:12:57
  Yeah. Like the, the, the, the, I guess it wasn't a bank. It was a private safety deposit company.
• 1:13:05
  I'm sure you heard about this. I think it was in California and the FBI raided it because they
• 1:13:10
  had suspicion that there were, you know, uh, drugs and money laundering operations going on and,
• 1:13:17
  And, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. For me, that's what LX was referencing. I'm kind of like, I don't think that's, I don't think that's an okay thing, but you know, Hey, circumstantially it's, you know, it depends on, on the circumstance. Right.
• 1:13:33
  But unfortunately, at times, our laws are written with blanket statements that don't make a distinction between what is a legitimate, you know, real reason for doing something and what isn't.
• 1:13:49
  Right.
• 1:13:49
  Yeah.
• 1:13:50
  It's unfortunate.
• 1:13:51
  But it's like anything else.
• 1:13:53
  It's like the guns.
• 1:13:54
  Like you can put a gun.
• 1:13:56
  It's a tool.
• 1:13:57
  The polygraph's a tool.
• 1:13:59
  You put it in the hands of people who are going to abuse it and there'll be problems.
• 1:14:03
  You put these laws in the hands of people who might abuse it and there's problems.
• 1:14:08
  Absolutely.
• 1:14:09
  Yep.
• 1:14:10
  I know you're talking about the polygraph.
• 1:14:11
  Do you have anything to do with the voice stress analysis stuff?
• 1:14:15
  Do they use that?
• 1:14:15
  No.
• 1:14:16
  No.
• 1:14:17
  They just, they use the different conductance.
• 1:14:20
  And honestly, it's like, it's really just to give that extra edge.
• 1:14:26
  It's much like the difference between a general agent and a SWAT guy.
• 1:14:32
  Well, the SWAT guy has a lot more training and better tools.
• 1:14:36
  So the difference between me as an agent and a polygrapher is he's doing the same thing I'm doing.
• 1:14:41
  He's just like better trained and has more tools.
• 1:14:44
  And so the polygraph is one of those tools to try to get you to do what he wants.
• 1:14:49
  much like in SWAT I got cut saws chainsaws battering rams rifles that helps me to get
• 1:14:57
  you to do what I want to explosive breaches we don't do those really yeah you had to play with
• 1:15:05
  the flashbangs at least oh yeah probably fun huh flashbangs are great I would take them when I would
• 1:15:10
  talk to um like classrooms junior high high school I'd hold up a flashbang I said this is a flashbang
• 1:15:17
  It does two things.
• 1:15:19
  Who can tell me what those two things are?
• 1:15:22
  And then you have a kid going, flash and bang.
• 1:15:26
  I'm like, yeah, that's right.
• 1:15:29
  That's it.
• 1:15:31
  I do have a question that I just thought of.
• 1:15:34
  Are all FBI agents special agents or is that just for special agents?
• 1:15:38
  So everybody's a special agent.
• 1:15:39
  Everybody's a special agent.
• 1:15:40
  And then we have about half the population of the FBI is the professional staff or support staff that are not gun toters that play all sorts of roles everywhere from secretary to automotive and different types of analysts and administrative folks.
• 1:16:01
  And I just lost the terminology, but there's an SSA as well, right?
• 1:16:06
  Supervisory special agent.
• 1:16:09
  Yeah.
• 1:16:10
  So that'd be mine.
• 1:16:10
  Next, my first level boss, the one who runs the squad.
• 1:16:15
  Super special agent.
• 1:16:17
  That's right.
• 1:16:18
  Then we have the special agent in charge who's the guy who looks over the whole division.
• 1:16:26
  Pretty cool.
• 1:16:28
  Interesting.
• 1:16:29
  Yeah.
• 1:16:29
  Very interesting.
• 1:16:30
  But the place you want to be is the special agent because now you're out doing stuff.
• 1:16:34
  You start getting up in administration.
• 1:16:36
  You start getting up on management and you don't have the fun anymore.
• 1:16:42
  A little more pay, the less fun.
• 1:16:44
  Just more management and more paper.
• 1:16:48
  Lots more paper, I imagine.
• 1:16:50
  Although, I would imagine it's mostly digital paper.
• 1:16:55
  Digital paper.
• 1:16:56
  Digital paper, yeah.
• 1:16:58
  I would hope so by this time, right?
• 1:17:01
  But you never know.
• 1:17:02
  Well, until 2012, we were using a DOS-based computer program.
• 1:17:09
  Oh, awesome.
• 1:17:10
  Yeah.
• 1:17:11
  No issues there.
• 1:17:13
  You'd have to, like, shift F5 to go to the next page.
• 1:17:19
  Oh, boy.
• 1:17:19
  It was crazy.
• 1:17:21
  Well, you know, hey, welcome to the current century.
• 1:17:25
  Since then, it's been a very good technological advancement.
• 1:17:31
  So long time and then quickly.
• 1:17:34
  Very cool.
• 1:17:35
  I want to know the important things like a Crown Vic or a Tahoe, which is your favorite.
• 1:17:39
  I've had both.
• 1:17:40
  I've had both.
• 1:17:42
  The last vehicle I had was a Tahoe.
• 1:17:44
  So good.
• 1:17:45
  I love that vehicle.
• 1:17:47
  And then the one before that was a Tahoe.
• 1:17:51
  I hydroplaned at about 2 a.m. going to a SWAT op.
• 1:17:56
  crashed it got out pulled over and looked and went okay this is still drivable
• 1:18:02
  and when went on down the road and i told a buddy this he goes son of a bitch that's why i love your
• 1:18:07
  generation you get in an accident pushed up your vehicle and you're like well i got enough to get
• 1:18:12
  to but then i got like 15 minutes down the road and i went i don't know if my head's injured i
• 1:18:19
  need to go home like you know here i am who knows and it and it was a good thing i did actually i i
• 1:18:27
  was fine but everything i had was in a lock box in the back and it took me an hour and a half with a
• 1:18:35
  sledge and halogen to get the hatch open two days later wow so there's no way i would have been able
• 1:18:41
  to go on the operation because when i had a gun you weren't exceeding the posted speed limit were
• 1:18:47
  you no it was just honestly i was doing like 65 i mean it was really it was above the speed limit
• 1:18:53
  but like it wasn't it just i've never had just just hit it and slam that wall wow so i love me a
• 1:19:02
  tahoe tahoe i had to talk my wife out of getting one of those again we live on a small farm yeah
• 1:19:12
  And, you know, we have a lot of mud, a lot of mud.
• 1:19:17
  And Tahoe, I'd just be towing her around all the time.
• 1:19:22
  Well, I didn't have to pay for this, so.
• 1:19:24
  Well, that's good.
• 1:19:27
  I don't think I ever would.
• 1:19:29
  They're pretty expensive.
• 1:19:31
  And here's another question I've always wondered.
• 1:19:33
  What is the, there seems to be a rule, and maybe I'm wrong on this,
• 1:19:40
  but it seems to be a pretty hard, fast rule that you guys only drive American motor company cars.
• 1:19:50
  That had been the hard and fast rule until a few years ago.
• 1:19:55
  So now it is almost all American made vehicles.
• 1:20:00
  And I assume it's probably because half the foreign ones are made in America too and back and forth.
• 1:20:06
  So, yeah, that was always the case.
• 1:20:10
  and then maybe five years ago, we started getting like,
• 1:20:14
  oh, here's a Nissan, and here's a Kia.
• 1:20:21
  Who got stuck with the Kia?
• 1:20:22
  Like the new guy?
• 1:20:27
  Not the SWAT guy, because we got all our crap to carry.
• 1:20:32
  Like, hey, Joe, you get the Black Tahoe.
• 1:20:34
  Bill, you get the Black Tahoe.
• 1:20:36
  Hey, Fred, you get the Kia, man.
• 1:20:38
  Well, it wasn't a Sorrento.
• 1:20:40
  It was at least a little bit bigger size.
• 1:20:43
  Or no.
• 1:20:44
  It wasn't a key.
• 1:20:46
  The Hyundai.
• 1:20:48
  Same difference.
• 1:20:49
  Yeah.
• 1:20:49
  It's a piece of junk.
• 1:20:51
  You get those mid-sized crossover types, you know.
• 1:20:58
  Yeah, we ran it in one year.
• 1:20:59
  It wasn't horrible, but.
• 1:21:01
  Right, right.
• 1:21:02
  I'd be disappointed.
• 1:21:04
  Are the drone operators all little?
• 1:21:06
  I say little, sorry.
• 1:21:08
  all younger younger people they happen to be on the team more the younger ones you know and they
• 1:21:18
  go to the school for that but you know the drones have a battery life about uh 45 seconds so by the
• 1:21:25
  time they get in the house the guys are like ah the battery's down and i mean it gives us a little
• 1:21:30
  bit of assistance and we've had guys um use anti-drone devices such as brooms you know
• 1:21:40
  like i was thinking you know ew stuff or some electronic warfare like jammers and stuff like
• 1:21:47
  that no okay like a like a blanket a blanket a broom tennis racket nice maybe a pillow pillow
• 1:21:58
  fight maybe a pillow yeah does that work against those robot dogs with the machine guns on the back
• 1:22:04
  too uh we do not have those um i hope we we'd have like yeah we would have little critters that
• 1:22:12
  we'd like toss in the basement i and i talked to my buddy the other day i was like hey how's the
• 1:22:16
  operations been going he goes oh my gosh like literal basement was just flooded with feces
• 1:22:24
  and we had to go down and rescue the drones.
• 1:22:28
  He says we're like taking buckets and like playing the floor is lava,
• 1:22:31
  except the floor was poop.
• 1:22:33
  And, you know, like trying to go through and like pick.
• 1:22:36
  It's just every bad story on SWAT is just poop because some people are disgusting.
• 1:22:45
  And so, you know, that's where the dogs go.
• 1:22:48
  Like this is the room where the dogs go.
• 1:22:50
  I had a buddy who was like, he told me like, I don't know where your life sinks to where
• 1:22:56
  one day you just decide we're going to start to win in the toilet.
• 1:23:00
  Like the toilet don't work or to win in the tub.
• 1:23:03
  He goes, the toilet don't work.
• 1:23:04
  So we're going to tune in the tub now.
• 1:23:06
  And that's just the way it's going to be as like, you've hit, you've hit a low point.
• 1:23:11
  Hmm.
• 1:23:12
  You've hit something.
• 1:23:13
  That's for sure.
• 1:23:14
  Yeah.
• 1:23:15
  Oh man.
• 1:23:17
  Sounds like you still talk to all your old teammates.
• 1:23:19
  It's kind of probably like a little brotherhood there.
• 1:23:21
  Oh, it's very.
• 1:23:22
  A lot of camaraderie, I'm sure.
• 1:23:23
  Absolutely.
• 1:23:23
  I mean, you got to depend on those guys to watch your back when you're working.
• 1:23:26
  So I'm sure that kind of transposes over to real life.
• 1:23:29
  Not kind of a lot.
• 1:23:30
  And it's not something where we all go, man, that was life and death.
• 1:23:34
  But they are actual life and death circumstances.
• 1:23:37
  Nobody is like afraid, but we're doing things where we could die.
• 1:23:43
  And then we get through it.
• 1:23:44
  And that bonds you together.
• 1:23:45
  where like week after week, I'm doing stuff with these guys where we're surviving.
• 1:23:52
  We're going through it and we did it because I supported you and you supported me.
• 1:23:55
  So absolutely, it bonds you.
• 1:23:59
  Yeah.
• 1:24:00
  So how far along are you on writing your book?
• 1:24:04
  Is it written now and you're doing back and forth?
• 1:24:06
  Yep.
• 1:24:07
  Yep.
• 1:24:07
  Written and going through with a content editor and then copy editor.
• 1:24:14
  Right now, the FBI has it to make sure that I'm not going to embarrass them, which I won't embarrass me more than anyone.
• 1:24:23
  And so they got to get that back and then it'll be typeset.
• 1:24:26
  So the book should be out in the fall.
• 1:24:28
  It is titled Irreverent from Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI.
• 1:24:36
  Very cool.
• 1:24:37
  So what have they asked you to take out of the book?
• 1:24:40
  I'm just kidding.
• 1:24:41
  It's one of those things where I'm like, what are you going to do if I leave that in?
• 1:24:47
  Like, you're going to sue me?
• 1:24:49
  And I also know that there's nothing in there.
• 1:24:51
  There's nothing I'm sharing that's, like, inappropriate to, like, tradecraft or something.
• 1:24:58
  And everything else has already been adjudicated, so it'll be fine.
• 1:25:02
  It's fine.
• 1:25:03
  Yeah, it's fine.
• 1:25:04
  Lighten up, FBI.
• 1:25:05
  Lighten up, FBI.
• 1:25:06
  Just publish it.
• 1:25:07
  I should.
• 1:25:08
  I should.
• 1:25:09
  My publisher's a little sticky on that one, though.
• 1:25:14
  They want to get the okay.
• 1:25:16
  Is this a one-book deal?
• 1:25:18
  Is this going to be something you follow up with another book?
• 1:25:22
  Are you under?
• 1:25:24
  I still got a bunch of stories that I start putting down like oh here some other ones So we see I think the way I wrote it is kind of unique because I telling the story about coming from being a pastor into this
• 1:25:38
  The stories themselves are pretty interesting, too.
• 1:25:43
  But we'll see.
• 1:25:44
  I think there's other aspects that I can pass on in another book that I think I learned from the FBI about leading and following.
• 1:25:53
  So there could be others.
• 1:25:55
  I enjoy writing.
• 1:25:56
  So we'll see.
• 1:25:58
  Well, that's a good thing.
• 1:25:59
  That's a good thing.
• 1:26:01
  All right.
• 1:26:02
  Well, I think we're at a point where it's a good place to start wrapping up.
• 1:26:06
  So first, first and foremost, where can people find you, follow you, find your work?
• 1:26:12
  And, you know, where do you plan on your book being released for consumption?
• 1:26:18
  So you can follow me on Instagram at underscore Eric underscore Robinson.
• 1:26:23
  On LinkedIn with my name and this face, and I think you probably put FBI and you'll find me.
• 1:26:29
  And then my website where you can follow what I'm doing and when the book will be released is preacher2breacher.com.
• 1:26:39
  Yeah, you like that.
• 1:26:40
  You like that, huh?
• 1:26:41
  That's good.
• 1:26:42
  That's good.
• 1:26:42
  That's a good one.
• 1:26:43
  It's natural.
• 1:26:44
  Preacher2breacher.
• 1:26:46
  There you go.
• 1:26:47
  All right.
• 1:26:48
  So we always like to give our guests an opportunity to give a shout out to someone that made an impact in their lives.
• 1:26:56
  And this can be a historical figure.
• 1:26:58
  It could be, you know, mom.
• 1:27:00
  It could be, you know, an old science teacher, whatever you want it to be.
• 1:27:05
  Who would you like to give a shout out to?
• 1:27:07
  We were just talking about them.
• 1:27:08
  So I got to see my SWAT teammates just yesterday because they've got their tryouts going right now.
• 1:27:15
  and so great to reconnect with them.
• 1:27:19
  My back hurts from getting slapped on it so many times with the hugs.
• 1:27:23
  So fantastic guys, the best, and one woman who I love too,
• 1:27:30
  the best SWAT team in the FBI and I was glad to be a part of it So Ben our team leader and the rest of the guys on the Cleveland FBI SWAT team then shout out to them
• 1:27:44
  Awesome.
• 1:27:46
  All right.
• 1:27:46
  Well, thank you very much for giving us some of your time.
• 1:27:49
  I've thoroughly enjoyed this.
• 1:27:52
  Alex, anything you want to wrap up with?
• 1:27:56
  I think we got everything pretty covered.
• 1:27:58
  I don't know.
• 1:27:58
  I could probably come up with a million more questions if you got all night.
• 1:28:01
  I don't know.
• 1:28:01
  second go around let's do it we'll schedule it for the next one i mean the only thing i was
• 1:28:06
  thinking of is is i don't know how old your kids are but how did they uh how did their friends take
• 1:28:11
  it when they come over and like hey what does your dad do is he sell cars or does he work at
• 1:28:15
  walmart or my kids my kids are a disappointment to me in this realm everywhere else not
• 1:28:21
  they just they never told anybody like they didn't want to tell people i was in the fbi and
• 1:28:26
  there's a certain thing where you're like hey don't tell everybody but like
• 1:28:28
  I would have my youngest go, oh, I have to go to a white elephant Christmas party.
• 1:28:36
  I got to get a gift.
• 1:28:36
  I go, hey, I've got this FBI water bottle.
• 1:28:39
  She's like, why do I want that?
• 1:28:41
  I go, are you kidding?
• 1:28:43
  You don't think some 18-year-old, 17-year-old boy wouldn't want an FBI water bottle with an emblem on it?
• 1:28:50
  She's like, who would want that?
• 1:28:51
  I'm like, everyone?
• 1:28:53
  It's cool.
• 1:28:55
  They're like, yeah, that's crazy.
• 1:28:57
  I mean there's times I guess like
• 1:28:59
  you guys know like
• 1:29:01
  I'm the lead breacher
• 1:29:03
  for an
• 1:29:05
  FBI SWAT team that's kind
• 1:29:07
  of cool like that's a big deal
• 1:29:09
  like yeah okay
• 1:29:11
  whatever kids
• 1:29:13
  yeah
• 1:29:13
  what are you
• 1:29:17
  gonna do kids kids are weird
• 1:29:18
  I definitely did not
• 1:29:19
  impress them that's for sure
• 1:29:22
  later on
• 1:29:25
  later on they'll be impressed
• 1:29:26
  like yeah
• 1:29:28
  pouring one out of my grave
• 1:29:30
  yeah we're impressed with you pops
• 1:29:32
  nah it's
• 1:29:34
  you know I don't know how old your children
• 1:29:36
  are but you know ours are
• 1:29:38
  in their 20s now
• 1:29:40
  same here
• 1:29:41
  it starting to change some of that you know a lot more appreciation for you know the parental role at this point than there was in the teenage years yeah yeah so when you retired did they give you
• 1:29:58
  like a gold watch or like a battering ram to take home or uh i whatever i could steal i stole
• 1:30:04
  my buddies in the swat team so our outfits are their cry precision gear and they're pretty
• 1:30:09
  expensive like three hundred dollars for the shirts and stuff and so i know how much that costs
• 1:30:16
  and they got to save money so with all the other gear i'm turning in i turn that in and my buddy
• 1:30:21
  liz who was working procurement for us and folded it up nice put it back on my seat said nope you
• 1:30:31
  keep that so that was nice nice yeah it is nice nice all right all right i'm out of questions
• 1:30:37
  okay no you're not but we can have him back on another time i'd be happy to do that
• 1:30:43
  all right everybody first thank you again for giving us some of your time i really do appreciate
• 1:30:49
  it uh and we would love to have you back on um all right everybody you know where you can find us
• 1:30:58
  we're everywhere we are now hosted also on fountain.fm go check us out it's a value for value
• 1:31:04
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• 1:31:06
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• 1:31:08
  dropping a couple pennies our way
• 1:31:10
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• 1:31:12
  or anything like that and if you don't want to
• 1:31:14
  then you don't have to there's no pressure
• 1:31:16
  what else did I want to say
• 1:31:20
  oh yeah
• 1:31:20
  remember
• 1:31:25
  wherever you are
• 1:31:27
  whenever you're watching this
• 1:31:29
  have an amazing day
• 1:31:32
  see you everybody
• 1:31:33
  thanks for coming by here. Yep. Appreciate you guys.