Preacher. Breacher. FBI Teacher, with Eric Robinson | Ship's Log #46

“I have never regretted going into an interaction with a victim, informant, or criminal, and employing curiosity.” — Eric Robinson 

Episode Summary 
For 12 years, Eric Robinson stood in a pulpit. For the next 24, he carried a badge. In this episode he tells Jeanne how a Baptist pastor from western New York walked into the FBI Academy having never held a gun — and spent the next two and a half decades working white-collar fraud, public corruption, counterterrorism, and crimes against children, all while serving 15 years on SWAT. The throughline that connects both lives turns out to be a single skill: getting people to talk. 

It's a heavier resume than the conversation feels, and that's the point. Eric explains how agents survive the worst of the job by telling each other stories, why he treats an interrogation like a normal conversation instead of a table-slamming standoff, and how he stays self-aware enough not to believe the whole world is as dark as his caseload — “you're a bird watcher; of course you find the birds.” Along the way, he shares some of his most memorable stories: the couple who got caught making out in the middle of his sermon, the church that held services in the Lucille Ball Theater, and the confession he got just by pressing play on a pile of recorded calls that caught a boyfriend cheating.

The episode closes with Two Truths & A Lie — a protective detail for an FBI director, a great-grandfather interned in WWI for preaching in German, and two Attorney General award cases — and Eric's memoir, Irreverent: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners with the FBI, coming this fall. We won't tell you which headline was the lie. You'll have to listen.

Eric's Bio:
Eric Robinson spent 12 years as a Baptist pastor before trading the pulpit for a badge and giving 24 years to the FBI as a special agent, SWAT operator, and firearms instructor. He worked everything from white-collar fraud to counterterrorism — and somehow kept his humor through all of it. Now retired, he's turning those years into a memoir. Turns out the same curiosity that made him a good pastor made him even better in an interrogation room.

Eric's Links:
Website: https://preachertobreacher.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-robinson-9220053a4/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_eric_robinson
Book: Irreverent: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners with the FBI (memoir, releasing fall 2026)

Eric's Call to Action:
Follow Eric on Instagram (@_eric_robinson) for his latest content, and visit preachertobreacher.com to sign up for updates on his upcoming memoir, Irreverent.

Who do you know who'd make a great guest for the show? Please let us know.
Email: info@projectcandor.com

Website:   https://www.projectcandor.com

Social Media

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/ProjectCandor/
LinkedIn:     https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectcandor/
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/project.candor/
YouTube:    https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectCandorPodcast

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Cold open

Eric 0:03

The human nature is to now now they're engaging in a conversation closer to your everyday discussion. So if I go in and I start screaming and yelling and putting

Intro

Eric 0:15

them down, acting in judgment, it's human nature that they're going to either fight back, be defensive, or just cut me off. So as much as I could make this a regular conversation, then I found criminals responding and telling me things they know they shouldn't, but here we are having a discussion.

Jeanne 0:35

Welcome to Project Candor, the podcast where ordinary people share unexpected stories. I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen, and today we are diving into a conversation that has me perplexed and intrigued. Our guest today has lived two very different lives of service and somehow managed to bring both of them into one extraordinary career. Recently retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation after 24 years as a special agent, Eric Robinson worked a remarkable range of cases from white-collar crime and public corruption to counterterrorism and crimes against children. He served as a SWAT operator for 15 years and

Eric Robinson joins the conversation

Jeanne 1:15

as both a firearms and tactics instructor. Eric will soon release his first book, a memoir that captures the humorous, surprising, and intriguing moments of his career. What makes this story especially compelling is what came before the Bureau, 12 years in Christian ministry, including pastoring a Baptist church in Western New York. He is a gifted storyteller with a quick wit and a rare ability to find the human thread in even the most intense situations. I am very pleased to welcome Eric Robinson to the show today.

Eric 1:48

Thanks, Jeanne. I appreciate it. I especially like to just hear all the great things about me, So let's just close it and everyone have a great day.

Jeanne 1:57

Well, you've done some fantastic things, and they are definitely extraordinary and unexpected. So so the way we work on the show is I start asking you some questions and then we transition into our two truths and a lie. Are you ready to get going? Let's go. Okay. Uh you spent 12 years in ministry as a church pastor. At some point, you decided you needed to move from that role to another critical role. You decided to make a major life change and enter the FBI

Leaving the pulpit: what to keep, what to carry

Jeanne 2:26

before making that change. What did you want to leave behind and what do you still want to carry with you?

Eric 2:33

What I wanted to leave behind was people affected for the better. And the church that I had established where I was finally senior pastoring was meant to be one that reached out to people who didn't feel comfortable in church. And what was great about it is we were successful. As I planted that church with a core group of Christians, I told them, I want this to be a place where if we do anything wrong, we're going to make errors on the side of grace. So if God's going to judge us, he'll say, You guys were too nice to people. And I was willing to take that gamble. And in doing that, people responded well. So over and over, people who maybe were curious wanted to go to church, but didn't want to go through the hassle of being in church and being judged could come to our church and feel comfortable and hear a good message, hopefully see some lives change along the way.

Jeanne 3:30

Very good answer. How big was the church?

The church in the Lucille Ball Theater

Eric 3:33

Well, we started 1997, I believe, or six, seven, and uh, you know, started with about a dozen people, and then at the peak, I would say we had about two hundred coming. So in a small city like Jamestown, New York, that was a good sized church. Our largest crowd was we had a thousand at one point when we had a Christian rock band come in and just let everybody come for free. And so that was fun getting to speak to a thousand people.

Jeanne 4:04

Oh, very nice. Well, you're a public speaker now, right?

Eric 4:08

I'm looking to do that uh right now in public speaking. I assume you'll broadcast this, so we'll count that too.

Jeanne 4:13

Yeah, that's true. Well, as a pastor, you're public speaking no matter how how big the crowd is, and you have to stand there and perform. Well, not perform, but give the message in a church. You have to give the message, no matter who's there.

Eric 4:27

Right. And one thing I think people don't realize who are sitting in the seats is I can see what's going on. So, you know, you think, oh, the lights are on him, he can't see me. And like, no, I I know you're talking to your wife. That's fine. You know, I know that you're passing notes or that you are sleeping. And on one occasion, I recall we had a young couple making out uh during my message. And it was and it wasn't particularly erotic, so I'm not sure what uh prompted them, but then the usher came by and gave a little tap on the shoulder.

Jeanne 5:01

Yeah, it's like in a room, right? Oh, I've never had that. And my dad was a pastor, so that is hilarious. I mean, there's always this thing that I wanted to do because I was always supposed to be the good girl, you know. And I was a pastor's daughter, everybody was looking at me. So I just wanted to stand up one day and start cursing, which I didn't do anyway. I never I wasn't uh wasn't allowed to when I was a kid, but I just wanted to do it to see what people would do, but I never did it.

Eric 5:28

You didn't realize that one of the options was making out with someone while your dad was Yeah, that would have been kind of crazy.

Jeanne 5:34

No, I wouldn't have done that either. Oh my goodness. Well, you know, Jamestown, New York, you're talking about Jamestown. Isn't that where Lucille Ball was from?

Eric 5:43

Outstanding. Our church was in the Lucille Ball Theater, which is why we could accommodate a thousand people at one time. And uh yeah, great place. We had met in separate places along the way at a VFW hall first, and uh the children's like the children's ministry was in the bar area, so we didn't know if that was one of the toddlers who had thrown up or if that was left over from the vets from the night before.

Jeanne 6:10

Oh my goodness. Okay, well that that's really amazing because she was always proud of coming from that area. She never shied away. You know, a lot of stars will say, No, I wasn't born, I didn't come from this little teeny town, try to cover up their heritage, but she was always telling people she was from Jamestown, New York. So that's good.

Eric 6:29

Great that you know that.

Jeanne 6:30

Yeah, I don't know. You just told me that a few minutes ago, actually. I it just popped in my mind because I I know silly trivia. I don't know why, but I did. So when you actually got inside the Bureau past the training, past the idea of it,

The FBI fire hose: nothing like the training

Jeanne 6:47

what was the moment you realized this world was going to be nothing like anything you had prepared for?

Eric 6:52

Well, I'm not gonna go past the training because I went from being a guy who'd never handled a gun before to, and I it didn't feel uncomfortable, but a completely new process of learning that skill, understanding what law enforcement does. So in the FBI Academy is when I got the fire hose of not just changing careers, but completely changing, and then trying to understand this century-old monolith of an agency where there's so many different factors. So I'm I'm learning how to handle investigations and understand the law, but also it's understanding what the FBI is about and how it operates. And I spent 24 years in the FBI, and I was saying before that I thought maybe I've learned about 75% of it, of what it does, but I think that might be a little too generous, too. There's so many aspects to it that you'll never find out unless you happen across somebody.

Jeanne 7:50

Do you watch any of the shows that you know, the series that come out with the FBI in it? How realistic are they?

Eric 7:56

My youngest enjoys watching criminal minds, and so she'll put it on, and then she says to me, You get five complaints, and then you have to shut up. And I usually run through those about three minutes in. I go, ah, come on. We don't have a supercomputer. There's no quirky goth girl that I call and she, you know, finds things out. We did have a quirky goth girl, but she, you know, had the same computer we did. And however, I I

Five complaints: FBI shows vs. reality

Eric 8:22

very much realize if you had a TV show or a movie that was realistic, it would be very dull. So the things that I got to do along the way were very exciting, but I I'm plucking those out of like, well, here's one moment, and I'm condensing six weeks of work into here's one event.

Jeanne 8:40

Well, I know you'd be tough to watch TV with if you knew all that background information. I remember JAG when that first came out. Was uh what was JAG standing with JAG the joint uh Judge Advocate General. Yeah, general. Yeah, that's it. I should know that. The legal people. But they would have all these things walking around, people walking around, sailors and stuff. And I would I was always saying, that person has their hat on, they're inside. No, get it off. My husband was like, shut up, but this is not fun. I keep he kept pausing it.

Eric 9:14

My favorite is always how FBI agents are wearing their raid vests. Like they'd even have them wearing them in the office. If I grabbed a hundred FBI agents and I just asked them where their raid vest is, uh maybe 40 would know, 20. I don't know. So we don't wear a raid vest and definitely not in the office.

Jeanne 9:32

Oh, okay.

Eric 9:33

And the raid vest are are they the that blue windbreaker with the F big yellow FBI?

Jeanne 9:38

Right, but is it that your um oh now I can't think of it. Bulletproof vest, does that serve as that or is that something?

Eric 9:46

No, it's just a marker to say this is the FBI. So we'll wear our ballistic vests, and right before I retired, there was a move to go back to the blue and yellow, but agents would have an olive drab vest, and and there's markers on it that says FBI and you've got a badge. And then for SWAT we had multicam, but with markers.

Jeanne 10:08

Oh, okay. Blue and yellow, that's Swedish flag. My husband's Swedish. I at least look, I didn't think it's Swedish people on TV. So you work crimes against children, counterterrorism, public corruption, some of the heaviest material a human being can carry. What did that do to you over time? And how do you figure out how to stay intact?

Eric 10:32

Well, I wasn't unaware of these things, and in many cases, some of those things were what people in my congregation brought to me. And they would say, Pastor, I'm having a hard time with this and I want to do better. I've made mistakes and I want to change,

Carrying the heavy cases and staying intact

Eric 10:48

and yet the criminals that I investigated or came across were the same people, except they were saying, No, I'm all in, that's this is fine, I have no problem with it. So I have an understanding of people wanting to do bad things, wanting to take advantage of others. I have seen that and and you've seen that. You're seeing the breadth of it. You're seeing how far this goes and how deep it goes. So you know, many times it's it's it's not a good word, but I would just say disappointing that someone is so caught up in their crimes. And and for some of them, like the sex offenders, they're caught in their crimes and they know it's wrong and they are ashamed of it and they hate it, and then there's others who have no problem at all that this is just what they do, or they may see it as amoral. I sell drugs, yep. If I get caught, I go to prison, but I don't see it as wrong. So there's all these different degrees, and the way that I handled it is the same way that many agents handle these things, and we tell each other's stories. So we look back on some of the events we've been through and we just talk about them, and and that I think is it's not meant to be cathartic, it's not meant to be a release, but I think our bodies know that we should just be discussing this. And when we do, we're always laughing and we're saying how crazy that was, but we're often recounting life and death situations or traumatic situations and discussing them as if we are survivors. We went through this, and now we're looking back and laughing and adding some dark humor of we survived. You know, here we are, and now we're trying to get it out in the open and just talk about it with each other.

Jeanne 12:49

Right. We saw a show, uh, Netflix recently. I can't remember the name of it, but it's about when they first started profiling people back in the 60s or 70s, I think it was the 60s, and they were talking to people that had been convicted of like mass crimes, mass killings and sexual addicts. And they got affected in ways that were that led them to drinking or to uh cheating on their wife. I mean, it's just it was it's gotta be a hard life to keep yourself together. So that's basically what my question was is you basically had avenues to uh vent, I guess, is what you're saying.

Eric 13:31

Well, it they have to be initiated on your own. We have employee assistance, very few people avail themselves of it. Obviously, you can see a therapist on your own, but much of it has to be taken care of within. And if there were difficult times, what I found is that you need to be self-aware. So you have to recognize that each day when I clock in, I am looking for bad people. Therefore, if I think all that I see are bad people, it's because that's what I'm digging into. It's it's like complaining about all the birds, but well, you're a bird watcher. You're going to find these people, and then you have to be self-aware that, well, this is me trying to find this. I know this isn't true. I know not every human being is awful or to this degree, and balancing that with, and yet there's things I don't know about people, and there's things that they do that are hidden, and I have to be careful of what is out there.

Jeanne 14:30

Yes. I like what you said. You're a bird watcher, so you're gonna see all of this going on if you're watching birds.

Eric 14:37

Yeah.

Jeanne 14:38

You recruited informants, interrogated terrorists, and worked the human intelligence side of investigations, work that requires reading people at a very deep level. Where did that skill actually come from for you? And did ministry and law enforcement teach you the same thing in different languages?

Eric 14:56

Right on the nose. The FBI teaches how to do interrogations and interviews, and yet if you're five years into the work, you don't really even remember what you were taught. And and you've picked up your own methods from for me, like what was essential to me, like what my personality was like, and then some of the skills that I have picked up from watching other agents. And much of what I learned in ministry carried over into working in the FBI, which is dealing with people. And so even though we don't have a quirky goth girl with a supercomputer, we've got good computers and we've got legal process, but eventually I've got to work with a human being. And so listening to people, as

Reading people: ministry meets interrogation

Eric 15:39

I did in ministry, was something that I did well, trying to draw them out and understand them. So if I'm working with a victim, I'm I'm wanting to be sensitive, being careful of what words I'm using or what I'm drawing out of them, while also trying to get as much pertinent information, essential information that I need. And with the criminals, if I come to them and I'm open to what they have to say and I'm exhibiting curiosity and I'm bringing the conversation to a normal level rather than slamming the table and yelling at them and calling them names, the human nature is to now they're engaging in a conversation closer to your everyday discussion. So if I go in and I start screaming and yelling and putting them down, acting in judgment, it's human nature that they're going to either fight back, be defensive, or just cut me off. So as much as I could make this a regular conversation, then I found criminals responding and telling me things they know they shouldn't, but here we are having a discussion.

Jeanne 16:47

Interesting. Well, I know that if you're a minister, you've definitely read the old testament. So nothing that you see today is not been done before.

Eric 16:58

Somebody's done some of it.

Jeanne 17:00

Yes, exactly. And and when I read that, sometimes I I just it's difficult for me even to read some of the things that are in there that are murderous and you know, battles and so forth. And yeah, so I can imagine you were totally more prepared than most FBI agents. And not that I want to have an FBI agent come to me, but I you seem like the kind of person that I'd like to have to encounter if that came up. But no, that's not gonna come up for me.

Eric 17:28

That's good.

Jeanne 17:29

You are writing a memoir, and it sounds like it's not a dark book. You're leading with humor and surprising moments that you experienced. What made you decide that that was the right lens to put on 24 years of this kind of work?

Eric 17:44

That's how I approach things. When we would do demonstrations for the community sometimes for SWAT, and our team leader would gather us around, go through what we're gonna do, and then he would say, and make sure that none of you are saying or doing anything inappropriate in front of the public. And he would just like look at me while saying that. So that's how I bring things, and also I didn't lose that fascination that I got when I was brought into the Bureau of thinking, oh my gosh, I get to be an FBI agent. This is amazing. And while, of course, there was tedium in the work many, many days, there were still so many things that I got to do where I thought, this is remarkable. This is something, and it goes with the stories that people told too, where here's a buddy telling me a story and I've heard it before, but also I I can step back and say, that's pretty cool. The things that we get to do. And near the end of my career, being on a the SWAT team, like maybe I'm holding perimeters, so I don't have a whole lot to do, but just make sure nobody comes my way. And I would hear the directions and the conversations, the activities of people going on inside the house as they're making calls for movement. And I would think, well, if somebody was listening to this, they would think this is pretty awesome of just the calmness and the professionalism of people carrying out. And so I try to capture that, tell those stories, bring the humor in. And there are some dark things in there, but also much like how we would address these dark things, you got to add some humor to it as well to get by with it.

Jeanne 19:20

That's gonna be a good book.

Eric 19:22

I think so. I think so.

Jeanne 19:24

Yeah, I think so too. But you have a positive attitude because a lot of people, and I've heard this from other other coaches and leaders that say you need to approach your job like, hey, I'm I'm privileged to be here. I'm happy to be here. And that's the only way that you survive or that you do your job effectively. If you're every day going like, well, I can retire in five years, or I can retire in 10 years, and that's what you lead with, the negative, then you're never going to do a good job.

Eric 19:51

Well, I would always tell my kids and and others that anyone who has a job and earns money for their families doing a noble service. If you get to do that job and earn money, and also you're bringing a benefit to the community, that's doubly noble. And I got to do that, I think, in ministry, and then I got to do that with the FBI. So like I was doubly blessed twice to not just have something that I can take care of myself and family with, but also that I could do something that brings a benefit to society. And then on top of that, call me triple blessed that it was exciting and it was fun.

Jeanne 20:30

Yeah, that's amazing. I'm not sure though. You know, when I was in the Navy, I I lost my father. So I don't know if I that muted me like to enjoy the things I could have done when I was in Hawaii.

Eric 20:41

Yeah.

Jeanne 20:42

But later when I was stationed at another duty station, I I, you know, took more advantage of it. I mean, I could have I was just unbelievably overwhelmed sometimes just riding into work because I got to ride, uh I was in Yorktown, Virginia. I got to ride in the Colonial Parkway. I don't know if you've ever been there or not, but it's brick kind of road highway, and it's covered in trees in the fall. You know, the beauty of that, just to have to drive there to get to your duty station, I was amazed. I'm like, I'm so fortunate to do this. I wouldn't do it otherwise. You know, I'd be sitting in my little town and doing a job day after day after day. I wouldn't do that, I wouldn't see the world, you know. So, anyway, after years of reading people for a living, your church family, criminals, victims, informants, colleagues, why do you think some people can behave and get things right while others just cannot? Is there a fundamental missing piece in some people, or is it something else going on?

Eric 21:43

Well, every person has a certain amount of draw to do what benefits them and might harm someone else. And if given a chance, even good people will do things on occasion that will put someone else in a deficit. The issue is to what degree how often you do this. And what I saw is many of these criminals were ones who had no care for that, had no, again, self-reflection of what will this do to someone else. I had one subject that I had investigated uh financial crimes for for years, who very literally was a sociopath, and he marked off so many of those traits. And he had victims coming to him begging for their money back, and among them was an older woman whose husband had died, and she was taking that money to take care of her invalid son, but she was hoping to invest it so now she would have a good sized nest egg to take care of him. So here's a hundred thousand dollars that she gave to a project she thought was true. He spent it on himself, as he had done many times, and it just it didn't phase him to even think of what that mattered to her. It was not an occurrence to him. And so there's definitely people who lack that compassion. Maybe it's from their experiences, maybe they've not been through it before. Maybe they've been through it and they feel like now the world owes them, and that world happens to be unfortunately a dial comes upon you for that. But there's many people that I would meet too, again, these criminals who did things that they just considered amoral. It was part of what they did, they saw no harm in it, and they just knew that if caught they would go to prison, but until then, it didn't affect them emotionally, it didn't affect them that they thought they were bringing harm to someone else. Many people just justify it too.

Jeanne 23:44

Do you feel, and this is a question I wasn't intending to ask, do you feel that there is genuinely a way to rehabilitate people that are on these trajectories?

Eric 23:54

No, absolutely. So one of the issues that we've gone through, one of the groups that I had investigated quite a bit near the end of my career were referred to as racially motivated, violent extremists. You would call them Nazis.

Jeanne 24:08

No, I don't call anybody. Trying to avoid that.

Eric 24:12

Whatever, you know, like people who are white supremacists, and much of the problem with them is they were going off of headlines, off of stories told to them from fathers. They lacked interaction in a positive sense with people who didn't look like them or came from a different culture. And so in the 50s, Gordon Alport came up with this idea of a contact theory where you need to have contact with people different from you in order to now gain a sense of empathy. So I really do think that that is something that can happen. Where if someone is confronted with, hey, you're selling drugs and those that harms our society, and here's how, but also here's a different opportunity for you, that can be something that has a positive effect on people. Pedophiles, they've typically been through trauma themselves, and that's how they're acting out. And many of the victims that we would rescue or we would interview had a good chance of being a generation ahead the next subject because of the harm that they'd been through. Because the men that we were arresting today were in the past harmed too. So there's a lot of different effects that people go through that bring out this negative, this criminal behavior, but certainly there's quite a bit that can be rehabilitated. I just don't know that the American justice system has a place or time for it. It's so difficult.

Jeanne 25:43

It's got to be overwhelming. I mean, you're out there trying to protect other people, so you're trying to put these people or incarcerate these people that are causing this damage. So your job is your job over once you do that? And I'm asking you a question about rehabilitation. That's not your role.

Eric 25:59

Yeah.

Jeanne 26:00

But um, whose role is it? Do you have any clue?

Eric 26:04

Well, so I look at it as there's two methods. So, okay, there's crime

Can people be rehabilitated? Bailing the sinking ship

Eric 26:08

in the United States, there's people doing harm, and so the ship has a hole in it and it's sinking. And law enforcement are the people who are just bailing the ship and trying to keep it afloat for the moment, right? But someone else needs to fix that hole, or else it's just going to be bailing and bailing, and we just need more people out there to bail so the ship doesn't go down. And both are needed. And for me, sometimes if we had a teen prostitute, we were seeking others who could step in and now start trying to fix that hole. And that was always what we were striving for, and that was difficult. Otherwise, with everyone else, our job is just to get them off the street, put them in the system, and move on to bailing for the next person. So it's a broad question. There's somehow these issues should be fixed at the STEM.

Jeanne 27:01

Right. I have my own thoughts on the uh foster care system, but that's because I adopted through the foster care system. So I think it could be fixed, but I'm not in that capacity to do it. Right. You know, any other stories you want to talk to us about today before we go and play our Two Truths and a Lie?

Eric 27:19

There's so many. One of my favorite, and I'll just give you a brief one, is that I had a case that uh I had worked with a colleague of mine where I was listening to all the jail calls of a pimp who was trafficking underage girls. He was placed in jail, but he was also then trying to reach out and influence the witnesses and convince them not to testify. So through that process, as all of his calls were directed to my phone where I could listen, I worked up charges on further charges on him as he was directing drug trade from prison and having his uncle, his mother, his girlfriend, and a couple other people involved, we got further charges on him. Well, my colleague said, uh, you did such a great job. You get to pick who you arrest when we do this takedown. And I said, Easy. I'm gonna arrest the girlfriend. I think I got a plan here. So as we went out to pick her up, we stopped by the local sheriff's office first in the small town, and I said, Hey, we're gonna go arrest this woman. Do you have a place where we could do a post-arrest interrogation? And the duty sergeant laughed and he goes, Man, I know that family. She's not talking to you. And I said, Okay, well, we'll see. So we picked her up without incident, brought her in, and I sat her down, and I had a number of calls that I had recorded that I wanted to play for her. Didn't even read her rights, just said, Here we go, I'm gonna play some calls. And the first call is her boyfriend talking to a w this woman's voice and saying, Oh, I love you, baby, so much. And she goes, Oh, I love you too, can't wait till you get out. And I said, What do you think about that? And she goes, Well, that's not me. I said, Oh, okay, I'm sorry. And I play the next one, and it's one after another of him talking to different women.

Jeanne 29:07

Oh no, you did not.

Eric 29:09

And I had I had like a dozen of them, and I only played three until she stopped me and she said, What do you want to know? So I didn't have to like normal interrogations. I'm like, look, this is how I know you're guilty. Here's all the proof. Now start confessing it. I didn't even get into that. All I had to do was show her that the boyfriend was completely unfaithful and she'd been sticking with him this whole time. We're driving back to the jail, and uh, I'm on the phone with the prosecutor, and she said, Hey, let me talk. So I give her the phone and she said, I'll testify on one condition. I'm the first one on the stand.

Jeanne 29:49

That's wonderful. How did you even think of doing that? I don't know. I guess just experience.

Eric 29:55

I thought at the very least, this will be fun. If I can get a confession and have fun, hey.

Jeanne 30:02

Yeah. Wow. You should be like uh advisor to some of the TV shows. I think that'd be a good job for you.

Eric 30:09

Absolutely. And then you'll start watching the shows and they'll be increasingly boring because I say this isn't real.

Jeanne 30:14

Oh, well, that one would be a funny scene, I can tell you.

Eric 30:19

That'd be a good one.

unknown 30:20

Yeah.

Jeanne 30:21

Yeah, exactly.

The confession he got by pressing play

Jeanne 30:22

Well, anything else you want to add, um, Eric, before we transition to our Two Truths and a Lie?

Eric 30:27

Uh, just to mention, as you said, uh my book will be coming out in the fall. It's entitled Irreverend from Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners with the FBI. And it details what would happen if you took a Baptist pastor and plucked him out of the pulpit and stuck him in the FBI for 24 years and he had some crazy experiences.

Jeanne 30:47

Yeah, that's wonderful. I can't wait. I'm gonna read that book for sure. All right. Well, now is the time when we transition and play our game, Two Truths and a Lie. And you have given us three great headlines. So for those listening, the way we play it is the guest gives us three headlines in advance of the show. I will read them out. I will guess which one I think is the lie. And then um, without him telling us, Eric will go through each story and not reveal the lie until the very end. That way we can see if we got it right. So I'll share my screen here for those um looking and then listening. I will actually read them off to you. This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts. Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, life can be different. Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder, you don't need permission to change your story. And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech. Simple socket print, the lightweight blazing, fast label print solution designed for those who need reliability without the blue. With version 1.5, you get instant printing in milliseconds, fully maintained print sequence, and automatic base 64 decoding all without needing print driver installed. If you're running SQL Server 2016 or newer, SimpleSocket Print 1.5 drops right in and gets to work. Keep your workflow simple, keep your label printing fast with Simple Socket Print. Thank you to our sponsors. So, number one headline: Eric spent two years on protective detail for the FBI director. That could be a good one. Well, there's a lot of FBI directors during uh your time 24 years, but you'll have to tell us which one. Uh, number two, Eric's great grandfather was interned during World War I for preaching in German. And then number three is Eric worked on two high profile cases that won attorney general awards. I just guessed that number two is a lie. I don't know why your grandfather would be arrested for preaching in German, not in in English. I don't know where he was. Anyway, I'm gonna say that's a lie. I'm confused on that one. So you go ahead and walk us through each of these stories.

Eric 33:24

So 2009-2010, I was protective detail for Robert Mueller. So you see this luxurious beard that I have. No one had facial hair in the FBI during Robert Mueller's reign. So while I respected him very much, I didn't

The memoir: Irreverent

Eric 33:43

mind when Jim Comey took over, and then I started seeing guys grow beards, and like, oh, fantastic, we can do this. But suits every day, the protective detail is very, very extremely boring. I mean, you're ready for the worst possible incident, and yet every day it's not the worst possible incident, so you're

Two Truths and a Lie

Eric 34:02

just opening doors and talking into your sleeve.

Jeanne 34:05

Going for coffee.

Eric 34:06

Yes, you you are you are an errand boy. Um, as far as my great-grandfather, he was preaching in a Lutheran church in North Dakota during World War One, and during that time he was visited by my predecessors saying, Hey, we're going to have to put you in a concentration camp, an internment camp, because you won't stop speaking in our enemy's tongue, and we don't know if you're spreading propaganda to your German congregation.

Jeanne 34:35

Ooh, that's a twist I didn't understand. Okay.

Eric 34:38

Yeah. And then two cases I had. One was uh in Chicago, where I worked, uh, the John Burge case. He was a Chicago police commander who regularly tortured his victims. And we got him Elliott Ness style years after the fact by charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in a civil case rather than getting him on actual civil rights charges. And the second case I worked in Toledo, Ohio, where uh my buddy had a case that I was a part of that we took a three brothers who've been giving money to Anwar al-Awlaki, , who was a known terrorist, so they were supporting their funding terrorist activities, and then the main subject wanted to kill his judge, and so we got an undercover to play that role, and he paid ten thousand dollars through his wife on the outside to have his judge killed.

Jeanne 35:33

And you you guys broke both those cases. I mean, you if it's true. Yeah, if it's true. Okay, so I have some questions. So the protective detail you said was boring. I don't have too much about that one. And you said the names of the people that which one was it?

Eric 35:49

Robert Muller, 2009, 2010.

Jeanne 35:51

He just passed away, didn't he?

Eric 35:53

Yeah, he did.

Jeanne 35:54

And then your grandfather, it was German soldiers that were internment camps.

Eric 36:01

It was German United States citizens or German U.S. German Americans who were placed in internment camps. Um there weren't many, but much like in World War II, the Japanese were placed in internment camps, Japanese Americans, they also did it in World War I for suspicion of sedition.

Jeanne 36:21

Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I guess I'm thinking modern, I'm I'm way too ahead of your grandfather, so they couldn't have like recorded it and had somebody translate what he was saying.

Eric 36:32

Yeah, my understanding is that it was known, and so whether it was FBI or uh another agency came out to him and warned him, and he said, That's all my congregation knows. I have to speak in German.

Jeanne 36:47

And was he treated well? I hope.

Eric 36:49

Uh he lived through it, so there's that. And that was my grandmother's father, so there's preacher's blood going through my system.

Jeanne 36:57

Oh, going through, yeah, your ancestry. Wow. I have the same thing. I'm not a preacher, though. So oh, and uh yeah, the two cases sound really interesting. Well, I don't know. Tell us which one's the lie.

Eric 37:11

Well, the lie is the most boring one. I I just figured that was most believable. I did not work a protective detail for the FBI director. I have done some protective details, so I know that they are boring, and I have so I have enough experience to explain this is not fun work.

Jeanne 37:28

Okay. Oh, well, the other two are very intriguing as well. So you have led some interesting adventures in your life. So what are these going to be things like will be in your book, or it'll have more detail for sure, but oh, absolutely.

Eric 37:44

A full chapter on that long investigation we had on John Burge in Chicago and what it was like to interview victims. So these victims were they're almost exclusively black men, were tortured 20, 15, 25 years prior, beaten, beaten with phone books, suffocated. One there was a lot of victims who claimed that uh they used a Vietnam-era crank phone that would create electricity and they would put the alligator clips on their genitals and shock them until they confessed. But we're talking to victims, and yet these victims were criminals. They were arsonists, rapists, murderers, but the police were torturing them in the past. So the whole issue was not empathy necessarily for them, but just believing what they had to say and making the point that the police cannot torture people. So the criminals got off and No, the criminals spent their time in prison, and we were talking to them after they'd served their sentence. Oh. One was even telling me, like, I was handcuffed behind my back, and then I was taken under a bridge, and one of the cops lifted my arms up as he stood on the bumper of a vehicle, and I thought he was gonna tear my shoulders out of the socket, and that's when I confessed. And because I confessed, I missed my mother's funeral. I was in while she died, and I said, Well, did he make you confess to something you didn't do? And he said, No, I just would never have confessed. I I thought, okay, well, I I don't feel bad for you with the confession. I feel bad that the police are doing things that are contrary to what they're supposed to do.

Jeanne 39:25

Right. Wow, these are gonna be great chapters. Okay, well, the next thing I wanted to say is I know people after listening to this are gonna really want to get in touch with you and talk to you. So I have put a slide together, and these will all be in the show notes uh of how to get in touch with you. You told me, well, you talked about your book a little bit, but you also told me when we talked earlier that to follow you on Instagram because that's gonna have your latest and greatest content and also probably re-announced when your book's coming out.

Eric 39:55

And to add to that, since we chatted before, I have a website now that people can go to and and sign up for you know information when the book will come out if they want to follow that, and there'll be more content. And that website is hope you're ready for this, preacher to breacher.com.

Jeanne 40:15

Preacher to breacher.

Eric 40:17

Yes, because I was a preacher, and then later in my my life I knocked down your door.

Jeanne 40:21

Oh, okay. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I like that. Well, I'll fix this link in here so people will know, but we'll put it in the show notes how to get in touch with you. And um, I wanted to go over your quote here because you gave me this really

Inside the Jon Burge case

Jeanne 40:35

nice quote. And can you talk about that a little bit?

Eric 40:38

Yeah, absolutely. This is something that I practiced. I don't know if I learned, but I honed it while in ministry that if someone came to me with issues, I couldn't just reply with answers. If you said, Pastor, I'm going through these problems and I go, no problem, here's Bible verses for you, that's probably the last time you're talking to me. But if I'm open and if I'm curious, if I'm listening to you, there was always a benefit to that. So even if I'm talking to a criminal and I'm curious at what they have to say and they lie to me, that's fine. Now I've gained some more information. So I don't need to shut you up, I don't need to stop you from telling me things that aren't true, because even if you're lying to me, now I'm getting your state of mind that you don't want to cooperate. I'm understanding what your defense might be because this is the story you're gonna tell. And then, of course, with the victims and so often with informants, just being open and drawing more things out, I can't just take what they have to say without digging into what more could there be. And so so many times an informant would give me information. And if I just say, Great, let me write that down, if I dug more, there was so much beyond what they're telling me that they can now know now we can dig further into that too.

Jeanne 41:59

Yeah, that's good. I really have enjoyed our conversation here, and I really hope that listeners will get in touch with you. And um, but for my listeners, I wanted to just say please join us next week when we have another great episode and guests. And until then, uh I'm Jeanne Anderson, your host, uh the Admiral of the Unexpected, and I wish you all smooth sailing. Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories

Connect with Eric: preacher to breacher

Jeanne 42:28

are unexpected, and the treasure is always real. If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew. Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck. I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected. See you on the next voyage.