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I The Team House with your host Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey,
folks, welcome to episode two hundred and seventy four of the Teamhouse. I'm
Jack Murphy. Dave's out tonight, D's back there producing. Our guest on
tonight's show is Eric Volez. He served as a career FBI agent, including
two stints as assistant directors, and we're really excited to talk about his whole
career. A lot of interesting stuff, kidnapping cases, counter drugs stuff,
then and then intelligence, so we'll get into all of that. I just
want to give a quick shout out to Casa Carabeo Cigars for providing the cigars
for this show. You'd find them at Costacarabeo dot com and please also check
out our Patreon there's a link down in the description. If you sign up
for five dollars a month, you get access to all the episodes of the
Teamhouse ad free. And we really appreciate you guys supporting the channel. So
with that said, Eric, welcome to the show having me. Cheers,
Thank you for coming in. Absolutely so yeah, thank you for having me.
I mean, it's our pleasure. So I'll ask you to start at
the beginning with, you know, kind of your origin story, like how
did you grow up and what was like that pathway that took you towards the
FBI. Sure, actually it's an interesting story. It's kind of like a
it's my bureau story. Is a real true mail room to boardroom type of
story. So I grew up in Puerto Rico. My dad was an army
so I'm an army brat born in Fort Gordon, Georgia, but Puerto Ricole's
where I call home, and back when I was coming out of high school,
it was right around that time where there was a group called the Machetetro
Group, an independence movement terrorist organization in Puerto Rico, and my dad had
gotten a job post army working in the FBI as an eye. It's not
an intel analyst. These these are folks, investigative assistants, and so the
agents work in their cases. These are the folks that would do a lot
of the DMV runs, some of the background stuff to kind of help the
agents along their cases. In eighty five, I believe it was eighty four,
is when happens the organized agent shoots a law rocket into the FBI office
in San Juan and it hits right above the offices on the fifth floor.
It hits on the sixth floor. But at the time they said, hey,
let's beef up the night crew. So there was one guy that did
midnight to eight, another guy then four to midnight. There was a swing
shift guy, and so they wanted to put somebody else on quickly. So
here I am. I'm eighteen years old, I have no credit and worked
anywhere. So my background took like nothing to get in. And so my
first job is working the night shift in Puerto Rico and picking up confidential trash,
you know, doing radio, doing mail deliveries. And that's how I
get started into the FBI. And then from there, you know. I
at that point, I was studying airway science. I wanted to be something
to do with aviation, air traffic controller. I went maybe pilot. But
then my first exposure to FBI agents. I remember sitting there was just a
kid, and there had been this raid earlier on. They'd taken down this
big gang and some swat guys had come up with this guy. This one
guy was all tatted up and some bad guy. And I'm sitting there in
my desk and there's a chair and they said, hey, we're gonna put
him right here, and they sat the guy next to me, and they
had these two big old swat guys, you know, all jacked up and
at that moment, I went like I want to be that, Like that's
what I want to do. And so I changed and I start to like
everything I'm studying in school changes, and I'd become an agent in ninety two,
So I have seven years clerical what they called. I was a clerk
back then, and then I become an agent in ninety two. So,
I mean, that's an interesting way to kind of, like you said,
you know, graduate up into the organization. Is that like, that's not
that's like atypical. Usually it's like college or law enforcement into correct Yeah,
it's not. I mean there are folks that start off in the bureau kind
of either as analysts or others, and then they become agents later on.
It's usually in agent careers. An agent position is usually a second or third
career. It's not your first thing you're doing. So a lot of them
have a background there the military law enforce is something accounting lawyers, and then
they become agents. Where in mind was my whole thing was, I'd started
from the organization. I was a GS three, so that's I was making
eleven thousand dollars a year. I mean, it's like back then, those
for me I mean, I'm eighteen years old, nineteen years old, and
I'm making eleven thousand bucks. That was a lot of money for me.
So but yeah, that's it's not typical. My path is not. At
least back then it wasn't. So nineteen ninety two, you go to Quantico.
Yeah, what's it like going through the training to be a special agent
at that time? Man, I tell you, I remember somebody once told
me this, and it was the best way to describe Quantico. It was
like, it's the best time of my life, but I never want to
do it again. So it's every day I was there sixteen weeks. I
think they've upped it too. It's I'm not sure exactly how long it is
now, but back then it was sixteen weeks. And every day it's like,
you're going to do this, You're going to take this test, You're
gonna do this whatever, You're gonna shoot this many times you're gonna and you
just get by day by day, and at the end of the day you're
exhausted, and you just go day two and before you know it, you're
you're graduating there and you're giving you a gun and a badge and they're sending
you out. But but it's it's not easy, it's not meant to be
easy. But they it's like I said, best thing I ever did,
I never would do it again. Yeah, at the time in nineteen ninety
two, I mean, what's kind of like the culture of the FBI,
Like what is it that they're training you to do? I mean, what
is the main focus of the organization at that time? Well, when I
was coming in, it was around the time Janet Reno, the kind of
the war on Drugs Southwest Border initiative. And I remember, because I was
in the FBI, A lot of the agents, you know, would tell
me like, hey, you know, you know where you're going, right,
And I go, because you don't know where you're going. You get
Quantico. You open up your letter at week eight and they tell you where
you're gonna go, and they go, You're going to the border, like
you're gonna work dope in the border. And I go, how do you
know that? Because everybody's anybody speaks Spanish is going to go and being Puerto
Rican, I spoke Spanish and uh, and sure enough there were four of
us in my class that spoke Spanish. Two got McAllen and two got El
Paso. So yeah, we were and that was the way it was back
then. I so you graduated from Quantico and that must have been a big
moment for you huge Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the best shape in my
life. But it's just exciting, exciting to go to Texas to McCallen,
you know, to actually work work drug cases. And it was hit the
ground running. I mean you got there. I remember the day I got
to McCallen, I get called like, hey, tomorrow morning, four o'clock,
we got an arrest. You know, it's like like that, it's
on. It was. Mccownan was a very busy office back then, not
just drugs, but fugitives, you know, folks that are coming and hiding
back in the valley. And so it was a NonStop and for an agent,
it's the best time of your life because you're just you're resting, you're
you're involved in a lot of it. And we were. We were teamed
up with our partners at DEA and Customs at the time, you know,
and another's I R S others that worked there, but DEA and US and
Customs, we were all parts of task forces and all the guys. We
all knew each other. It was really cool. It was nice being part
of that community. Yeah, and you mentioned a little bit of it.
I mean that Janet Reno was really escalating the pressure on the flow of drugs
coming across the border. Could you expand on what kind of like what you
were seeing what was going on at that time. Well, it's interesting because
we you know, we had Title twenty one authority, which allowed a bureau
to work drug cases much like DEA. So what the approach that the bureau
was taking was that we we focused on the law large cartels, whether they're
Cardio Fuentes. You know, what's the other the different you know, Juan
Garciabo, which is garciab Ran, the golf cartel. So McAllen, that's
what. So for us, we had a squad, a squad, and
typical squad is usually you know when it were ten twelve fifteen agents. We
had about eighteen agents on our squad. And the way we did it in
McCallen was there was one case, maybe two cases, but you had to
link the case to a cartel. If you could not establish that link,
you could, Yeah, I mean you only had so many resources and so
the case agent basically ran the case and then the rest of us supported it.
We did a surveillance, we did we sat on wire taps, we
did whatever. But that's how it was, and that's my first My first
activity as an agent was sitting on wire taps, you know, like bouncing
around like, you know, supporting cases. And I knew. I said,
I'm gonna end up doing this for the rest of my life unless I
become the case agent. You know, you told me earlier on that it
was kind of funny listening to the wires. Yeah, because you speak Puerto
Rican Spanish. Yeah, these guys speak like Mexican prison Spanish. Yeah.
Yeah, Well I remember it because they sent me up. I was in
mccaun. I just got my apartment and then they said it was around Christmas
time or Thanksgiving. It was the holiday, and they said, hey,
you need to come up to San Antonio. It was a wire. We're
working a Mexican mafia wire and the main subject I believe was was in California.
But you know, there's the leadership of the Mexican mafia was in San
Antonio. We were up on these wire taps and you know, I show
up and it's me. I think I have the four to midnight and it's
me and I think we're on four lines. So the other three were San
Antonio PD guys. You know, they all grew up in the Earth and
they they know the they know the language, you know, and so I
remember my first call comes in. You know, at the time, we
had cassette players like you know now it's all digital, but back then you
have accept players. And we had like three three machines to explain all that
to our younger audience. Yeah. Yeah, So we had like three machines
and then the machines of the original one. You take that one out,
you seal it, that's evidence, don't mess with it. They put a
fourth one for me. That was because that first call I remember going off
and I put it on, put the headphones on, and they're like,
oh, it just goes on and on and it ends, and I take
that thing off, my headphones off, and I look around the room and
I said, I have I didn't understand a word these people just said.
And I said, I don't know what I'm gonna do. So they put
another machine. Then I could take it out and in between calls, I
could read listen, and I would pick things up, like, for example,
like in Spanish, moble like means furniture. You know, weblee and
them is a car, you know, and the fattie is for us some
fare and then for them it's money. And so they today's you can see
that fatty and I'm like something about furniture, and they're going to some fair
and these guys sand into a PB. I just laugh and they laugh and
laugh the only thing that made me feel good is that the opposite of thing
like when the Mexican American agents, the agents that were from Texas or whatever,
that that kind of grew up with that language Spanish kind of when they
got sent to Puerto Rico and they sat on Puerto Rican wires and they had
to listen to to like like where I came from talk. They say,
that is impossible. So I at least at least at least I picked up
the language. But it wasn't easy at all. It was it was pretty
It was very challenging at first. So how did you make that jump then?
From you know, you said you didn't want to spend your whole career
sitting on wires? Yeah, how did you make that jump to you know,
working cases. Yeah, well, I mean, like I figured out
real quick. I said, okay, so I got it. I've got
to open up. I got to start a case and I have to tie
it to to a large cartel, one of the one of the top organizations.
And and at the time I was stationed in McCallum, but we had
we had Hidago County, and then there were Star County, which is just
west of the UH and a lot of dope was coming up through Star County
through rig Grand City, Roma, Texas. And I said, you know,
I was single, so I figured, like, you know, it's
not like a forty five minute drive or something. And there's enough work in
McCallen. You could stay in mccount But but I was gonna go out to
the to the wild West, and I was gonna I was gonna go find
the big case. And I and I remember I teamed up with a Border
Patrol agent one Garcia is the name Janetho, we called him. And he
took me under his wing. And you know, I said, hey,
listen, I want to make a case. Like I you know, I'm
tired of sitting on these wires. I want my own case, and he
says, okay, And I said, well, who's the biggest, baddest
guy here, Who's who's the one everybody wants. At the time, there
was a guy named labru Ha the witch and uh and he says, labru
Has the guy that runs here and he's tied to Garcia Ibrago and this and
that and whatever and uh. He he taught me how to become a good
agent, like and I stayed with him and sure enough, in fact,
I'll talk a little bit when I talk about my intel career, but he
he taught me the value of intelligence, like how intelligence drives investigations, like
for example, Juanito, like being border patrol. They could come in I
believe it's twenty five miles within from the border. They can get into the
ranches, you know, and do what they have to do for obvious reasons.
And whenever there was a big load that had crossed, the organizations would
celebrate it by having a pachanga. Pachanga is coining like a like a like
a barbecue, you know, the fajita's beer and they're celebrating. So Janito
had this really smart idea that you know, when he saw pachanga's happening in
ranches. You know, he'd just write down the license plate numbers of the
cars the trucks that were at the pachangas, and so he had a whole
list. And so when you're working your cases and you know DA had taken
down this load or there was a load that was crossed and you're sharing back
and forth, then he could piece together like this guy has been at a
pat chang go every time this organizam. And that's how he tied it all
up. So that's the true meaning of collection, like intelligence collection, understanding
like what your gaps are, and how he was smart and did that,
and he taught me all those kind of things. And later on I used
those examples when we started talking about how the Bureau transformed into this this kind
of dual agency, you know, with with the Intel mission as well.
But yeah, that was that's how I got in. And sure enough we
got up on one wire tap and we ended up spinning off on three more,
four more, and we ended up taking down that entire organization, disrupting
that entire organization. Was that a Riverwich Riverwich, Yeah, River Rich was
a code name. We gave it just because La Bruja which means the Witch
and the Rio Grande Valley and the river. So Riverwich was Operation River which
was the one that uh that that was that was my first big case.
So how did how did that investigation progress as you get warrants for these wire
taps and start developing the case. Yeah, you you basically you know,
you you try to get up on a phone, you know, through the
court order, you know of one of these these leaders of this organization and
hopefully because it's hard to penetrate those organizations through regular human sources. You know,
they're very close knit, they're very tight hold. Everybody knows everybody,
Like the cars you drive. A minute you're driving in there, they know
you're not from here. So getting somebody in is is hard. So you
you have to be smart enough to understand like how they're communicating and what phones
they're using, and then developing the problem cause to to actually be able to
to intercept that phone with a court go to a judge with an affidavit and
get that doing. But once you're on the once you're on the right phone,
you're picking up a lot. Now they all talked in code, you
know, like each of them had numbers and areas. I remember one time
there was we were on this, on this this, and I would go
and every day I would look at the pen registers and see, like what
numbers. I knew all the numbers. I had memorize every single number.
And I saw one number. I was like, wait a minute, this
one I don't know. And sure enough that led me to a house.
And then you know, little by little we started to develop its improper cause.
But there was one of the interesting things about that case was there was
always this allgate. There was always this rumor that there was somebody that was
at the with the customs time that an immigration I'm sorry, that was allowing
the loads to come in, and they knew who she was. But you
know, she's very smart about it. And and I remember one time I
go in and it's like, I said, hey, any anything, I
asked the translators, like anything relevant, And I look at the stack of
notes, you know, summaries, and I saw one it said like it
said you know, hey, VA was like, this's going to happen and
it goes see alauna memo pescado like where we eat fish? And I knew.
I knew that there was there was a of entry near at Falcon Lake,
and there was a place you could eat fish. There was like a
little restaurant there, and I went, wow, I wonder if something's gonna
happen at one o'clock at that port of entry. And so I had been
working with the immigration folks, and I said, hey, listen, you
know is she what is her schedule? She goes, well, she's she
she was supposed to be in real Grand City, but she asked to work
Roma at one o'clock. She takes a one o'clock shift. And I went,
I told my boss, it's happening. He's like, what do you
mean. I go, it's happening, Like they're going to cross and she's
going to be there. Are you sure? And I said, I know
it. I just know it. I mean I've been working this case long
enough, something's going to happen. So we had everybody out there, we
had we had a really cool setup with DPS and and sure enough, man,
I remember she she requests to kind of start at two o'clock or she
changes her time. And I went, oh, man, now I got
everybody out there that would be like, what's Eric up to? And then
sure enough, call comes in and goes like hey, ALASDS like they they
changed the time too, And I knew then sure, no, I remember,
I remember we were all we had, we had people kind of inside
the customs or the immigration office that could has an eye view of what's going
on there. As a lanes would come in and uh like clockwork man.
The first car comes in, the first car, she she enters the tag
and you know, we we could see that she was in. She enters
the tag and it's the right tag, and we say, don't follow that
one. Let that one go. Then here comes a Crown Vic. Those
Crown Victoria's they can hold like five hundred pounds a weaves in the trunk.
And the Crownvic comes and she makes this a gesture like she's entering something.
But we the guy in our task force, our customs guy, he said
she didn't enter anything, and we knew that one. That one comes in,
and then two more Crownvics come right boom boom right back there, and
we were like, okay, so everybody, hold tight, you know,
hold tight tight. But then DPS, you know, they're they're fantastic.
They you know, they did the traffic stop. But these guys ran and
all three of them took off and jumped in once a couple of them jumped
and river and went back south. But we ended up taking down fifteen hundred
pounds of week that day. That five hundred pounds in each each trunk.
And then the wire went crazy. That's when it gets really good. What
happened? Yeah, they're all exact, they're all pointy figures. Who you
know, what happened? So and then the case just goes on it.
That was that was the most fun area. And you busted a corrupt immigation.
Yes, yep, yep, yep, because she she ended up getting
prison time obviously for that. But that's how you you had to you had
to put the work in, like you had to really understand what what normal
looked like and then what is out of place? And that one call was
out of place? That one call was like who is this person? Turns
out the call that he made was a fugitive that was that was up north.
It had come in and was living in McAllen and that person had made
the call. And so that's all it took was that one break and then
we were able to take down this But that's it's a lot of fun.
I mean it shows it shows really kind of how agencies working together because we
had I R. S D, A Customs, we were in a nos
DEF task force. It was it was just the best time. I mean,
that was obviously a huge event. But you mentioned that the wire goes
crazy. Was there like a kind of culmination of this case. Yeah,
yeah, it culminates we take down the whole organization everybody. It's you know,
you want to take the time to identify who all these players are.
You don't want to take it down too soon. Uh, but sometimes on
these wires, you know, it gets risky because you're you don't want to
heat it up. So like you're taking down a load, you don't want
to let the dope walk. So you've got to have creative ways of you
know, like the we would random Yeah, like the Furious Texas was the
checkpoint, so we let them know like hey listen, this is coming up,
and then they do a search and then the wire go out. What's
going on? It's like, you know how it starts to get the point
where you can't do that too because it's going to start heating up. And
so we we calculated the time I had been transferred to Puerto Rico right before
the takedown, and another case agent had taken it up after I had left.
But but yeah, that was that was one of the best people.
I don't remember dozens I know in which organization was this. It was A
It was A. The guy that was running the show was his name with
Hector Martinez, but he was tied to the wan Garcia Abergo organization with the
golf cartel. Some people might know that if you watch that show Narco,
Yeah, the one they do not in Columbia, but the Mexican version he
shows, you know, he's on that and so on. But that was
that I tell people, like my kids and stuff like, if you watch
that, that's what my life was like. That that was because that was
literally nineteen ninety two is around there when I when I got to McCallan.
So, yeah, a lot of fun and then from there you get sent
down to Puerto Rico working you know, gang cases and public corruption. Can
you set this stage, I mean, especially because you're from Puerto Rico,
can you set the stage a little bit for sort of the the political but
also the criminality that that you had to deal with. Yeah, So Puerto
Rico just opened up some we call them resident agencies, are like suboffices,
one in each side of the island Ponce Fajardo. Then where I was in
the west, the west part of the island, a lot of gang activity.
We were there was a something called the Safe Street Task Force and everything's
multi agency with POPR Police of Puerto Rico, and we had task Force officers
that were on our team, police officers that we had brought on our squad.
There was a lot of that, a lot of public corruption work,
bribes, you know, federal money going into Puerto Rico and then people taking
cuts of it and things like that. So it's like they say, the
target rich environment. You know, there was there or lack of course,
the Puerto Rican nationalist movement still kicking at this point. It wasn't like it
was when I was when you started. Yeah, yeah, not like when
it was when I was in the eighties. There was there was a fugitive
that everyone was trying to trying to catch that was tied to the machitos they
thought was around our he was he was our Io R. But but that
was it. That was extensive, and it was you know, I mean
there was work, but I was focused on you know, gangs and public
eruptions, stuff like that. Any any memorable cases that you worked on during
that time down there, Well, the there was a case, the the
biggest case that I worked when when I was down there was a case that
involved a corrupt mayor that was taking money federal money that was coming in.
He had he had he had an architect, I'm sorry, an engineer that
drew up plans. And this engineer basically would would do the work, but
he'd have to pay the mayor thirty percent of the work. And I remember
when we first that case came in. My partner, uh, may rest
in peace. He passed away, but he he, he and I were
sitting in the office and we got a call about like, hey, listen,
this is this guy he has some information, you know about corruption going
on. And it was late, you know, like, yeah, you
know, really does he really kind of thing? I said, sure,
we'll talk to him, tell him to come over to our office. And
we waited for him, and he showed up and he was he was an
engineer, you know, and and I remember, uh, he'd tell it.
He's telling me about the mayor, and I said, you know what,
there's there's one way we can make sure this is true. And he
says how says, well, we'll go go talk to him, but we're
gonna we're gonna wire you up. You know. So we got we got,
you know, authority to do all of that and consent. And I
remember because at the time this is so now you like watch movies and you
know, you all this sophisticated technology, but it was a cassette recorder.
Dude. It was as big as that note pad, it seemed like,
and it was about this big is in it. And so we ended up
going to a hotel room and then I said, okay, drop your pants
because we're gonna put it like here on your ankle. We're gonna run that,
we're gonna run the wire up here, we're gonna tape it up here.
And the man is sweating his sweating and you need to relax because you
can't go in looking like this, you know. He's like, do you
have anything smaller like in the movies, everything smaller than No, this is
it. But I said, nobody's there. He'll never suspect the thing.
And sure enough, he goes in and he has a conversation with him,
and he's like, either give me the thirty percent or you're never gonna work
in this town again. It's perfect. And that led to just a long
investigation where ultimately on video we're you know, paying, he's paying, you
know the money, and it was another huge takedown, another good case,
and that that was you know that that's important to me because I mean,
I love Puerto Rico. It's island I grew up on. In the corruption,
you know, that impacts a lot of everything. You know, when
you're when you're having to take money that's meant to go to fixed streets and
schools and stuff like that, and then you're people are stealing it. So
that gave me a lot of a lot of pleasure work in that, you
know, put those kind of guys away. I know, that's awesome.
Yeah and uh and then you get sent to D A S O D.
Yeah. Yeah, so that's I become a supervisor. It's funny because people
ask me because I spend a lot of time in leadership roles in the bureau,
and I would give leadership speeches and stuff like that, you know,
and sometimes people say, like, you know, were you inspired by you
know, some particular leader. You know, it's like, what drove you
to be kind of a leader in the FBI? And I tell them,
like, well, actually, what drove me was I had when I was
an eight. I love being a street agent. I just loved it.
I mean, you work your cases a lot of fun. And my time
in management, I don't think I was ready for it. Let I still
wanted to spend more time in the field. But I had. I had
just built a house and it was on the on the the beautiful home was
on the cliff, right up on the water, and I was building the
house, and I'd gotten a loan at the bank, just like everything else.
And hurricane I think it was Hugo comes by and it blows. The
whole house is destroyed. So the whole top of the thing is gone.
And so when I go to I go to find the builder. I can't
find the builder. The builder is gone. And it turns out the builder
was involved in this kind of sort of a Ponzi scheme where he was using
money from certain loans to fix other homes that were yelling at him. And
so it turns out like I don't now I don't have any money. The
builder's gone and I have to build the house myself. And I just literally
would get up early in the morning go to the concrete place. I'd hire
people like it was a disaster. And I said, I'm going to go
broke because I'm this. You know, I don't I can't afford this,
and and uh yeah. So so I did know that if I got a
promotion, I could sell my house through through the transfer program, the relocation
program, and so I said, okay, you know, I'm gonna I'm
gonna see if there's any jobs at headquarters and then I'll get a promotion headquarters
and then and then I did, and that's when I got my job.
And then sure enough, you know, the relo company buys my house and
I'm able to get out from under. So it wasn't like inspired through a
book by Poland Powell or anything like that or George Washington. It was like
I was broke and if I did not sell this house. And so,
but when I become in a leadership role. When I was at SD,
I didn't really manage people. I was more part of Special Operations Division,
kind of helping manage investigations that were nationwide. But I really liked when I
became a supervisor. I liked working with the teams. I like being part
of that and uh, and that's when I stayed on. But the kind
of the trajectory into like leadership roles in the FBI. But it was it
really was more than you know, trying to get from from under from a
low Yeah, not not a very not a very glamorous story, like you
said, not not inspired by a JFK speech, But yeah, it's still
a reason got you still, Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's
a hell of a it's a hell of a motivator when something like that happens.
Uh. Could could you tell a little bit more about what s OD
was, because I I've heard of them before. But yeah, I don't
really know too much myself, you know, I don't A lot of people
don't talk about In fact, I don't. I don't know how much I
can say about it. I will just say it's it's a multi agency organization.
DEA runs it and they bring in partner agencies and they're focused on helping
to coordinate large scale investigations that are that are across the country, you know,
I mean the types of investigations are coordinating. You know, have subjects
that are in all like maybe ten different states, and so the what we
call we call ourselves staff coordinators, and we basically you know, helped help
provide resources, financial resources to these major operations like huge drug trafficking rooms.
They're all drug trafficking cases, big drug tracking cases. And yeah, and
so what what I would do is I would support certain offices in my region
was the Texas area, and so whether it was San Antonio, Dallas,
Houston, Opasso, and I would work with the case agents of those big
cases and help them any way I could, you know, with resources and
things like that. So but yeah, that was it was a lot of
fun. And again I'd worked with DA my whole career, so it was
kind of neat being able to work with them there. Then let's talk a
little bit about you know, kind of like around this timeframe nine to eleven.
Half. Yeah, if you tell us a little bit about where you
were and what your job was, you know, and weading into the next
thing you got pulled into. Well. So yeah, so nine to eleven,
the actual date of nine to eleven, I was in Puerto Rico.
I was there doing a training, I was I was part of the EA's
s O D. But I was supporting. I was in a training team
going to San Juan. I remember the secretary kind of telling me like,
hey, there's a plane flew into the World Trade Center. And I went
over to the TV and I and I saw kind of what, you know,
what's now if everybody knows, you know, the first tower and then
the second tower hits, and it's like because we thought, like somebody just
accidentally took a small plane. You know, we don't know what's going on.
The Special Agent in charge of the San Juan Office basically designates us this
team of people from headquarters like we're part of the San Juan Field Office at
this point, and so all hands on deck, and we we wanted to
we wanted to get back home because you know, like my wife and kids.
You know, I was worried because I mean I didn't know exactly what
was going on, but I didn't know that our house we lived over near
Oakden, where the planes would fly over our house all the time, you
know, and I'm thinking, you know, if they shoot that plane to
all this stuff's going you know, But there was no flights leeving and one
of the most eerie things I remember was when the first United Airlines flight that
left San Juan to go back to Dulles. They let us get on that
plane and so we you know, blue lighted it all the way to the
airport, and the agents that were on our training team got on that first
United Airlines flight back to San Juan and it was I'm sorry, back to
Dulles. The flight attendants on that plane were friends of the many of the
flight attendants that passed away because one of the flights originated from Dulles and so
they were going back home and they would come up to us crying, just
thanking us for being there. They were very scared, you know, like
Veig would imagine. And then when we get to Dulles and we land.
I don't know if you've been to Dullas there, but I'm sure you have
ye. There was nobody. It was completely empty. It was the most
eerie feeling. And the next day we all were to report to headquarters,
to the SIOC, which was think of it as like a big command post
there in the building, and there was a line of people and to SoC
the entrance of sichs Syock. Sich's designed to be a command post where you
know, you have a large scale investigation. They'd be coordinated, and one
hijacking would have had that place going crazy. I mean just filled to the
top. Right. There were four hijackings here and so I remember lining up.
We were all lined up, and then I got to the front of
the room and I said, Eric Vilez, you know SOD Criminal Division,
and he says okay, And it was pretty chaotic. He goes go to
room E two. I forget what the name of the room was, and
he's like and I said, okay. So I walk right through the center
of psyok and it is like controlled chaos is probably the way to describe it.
Just like there's a lot of movement. Everybody's just talking. And I
find room E two and there's another guy sitting at the table and I go,
Eric Velez, like they told me to come here, and he goes,
okay, you see that box that all those boxes along the wall.
There was a lot of boxes up along the wall, and I go yeah.
He goes, well, those are all letters that people have written to
director Muller. You need to open them, read them and see if there's
anything of value. Tip value in them. You know, somebody could have
written and said, you know, hey, my neighbor or whatever. So
I start to open letter by letter, and the one of the most interesting
things, like the most patriotic letters you'd ever read. Like there are people.
I remember one was like, you know, dear mister Director. They
all started like that. It's like, you know, I'm a former marine.
I still were size thirty two. Put me in. You know,
you don't have to pay me. Everybody was coming together. Everybody wanted to
be part of this, and I always wondered, like, whatever happened to
all those letters, because I thought like it'd be great to kind of put
a book together called Dear Mister Director and kind of show because I think that
the further we get away from that, I mean, there's people that are
now police officers and government and law enforcement and serving the country that weren't even
alive when that happened. But the further we get away, it's easy to
forget, like how we came together as a country and how we united.
You know, I remember how hard it was to buy an American flag because
they were all out of stock. They were all over the bridges and American
flags everywhere It was crazy because like I'd come into the sock and I work
a night shift and there would be like boxes of skittles or boxes of freedo
as potato chips or something that people were you know, donating, so that
we because we were working around the clock NonStop. How it's crazy how we
all came together. And but yeah, that was that changes because now I
go from I get an assignment right around then, I get assigned to the
LA where working the drug squad a supervisor in Santa Anna, Orange County.
But that doesn't last very long. I become a JTTF, a Joint Tearism
Task Force supervisors. My my career transitions from criminal work to national security work
before we get into that in not long after nine to eleven. I guess
in two thousand and two, there's a kidnapping case. Yes, tell us
a little bit about how your involvement in that came about. Yeah, that's
one of the hardest cases I ever was involved in. I mean, when
you work in these rasse res an agencies, these smaller offices, you tend
to work a lot of different types of cases. Even though you may be
assigned to one squad that like my squad that worked drugs or then became a
terrorism task force. If the violent crime squad that had kidnappings, if there
was ever a child kidnapping, it was all hands on deck of that we
all worked it. And this was a case that involved a little girl I
think she was six years old named Samantha Runyon. A lot of your listeners
and viewers may remember that, especially people from that area. A little girl
that got kidnapped right from from her front porch. And my job was,
Okay, Eric, you head over to the command post, which was over
by Orange County sheriffs that had set up something near where the little girl lived.
And I never wanted to work crimes against children cases like I have by
at the time my daughter was six years old looked a lot like her,
you know. And I mean, God bless all those agents and officers and
law enforcement that worked those cases. But it's hard to kind of see that
kind of stuff. And so my job was, I was we had we
were going to interview every single person that lived anywhere near that place, like
and we said, hundreds of agents that had been deployed from Los Angeles down
to Orange County, and I was keeping track of Okay, you hit this
apartment complex, you this artment comface, and we're tracking all the leads,
so I didn't have to kind of look at any of the images or anything
like this. But I remember I was sitting there and there was a guy
from behavioral analysis unit from Quantico had come in and he he he asked me,
he says like, he says, do you think this was post mortem?
And he shows me the picture of her. Messed me up? That
messed me up, Like I remember how hard that was, you know,
because of my daughter. And I remember that that affecting me in ways I
never thought it would affect me even as much. And I talk about mental
health a lot because a lot of folks are like, especially guys, like,
you know, I'm not gonna, I can, I'm can tough it
out. But that that messed me up. And I definitely had to need
to get some help and to talk through that because it was tough. It
was tough to see that that's what messes up you know what what? And
I mean, it's perfectly natural. Botherre's a lot of guys, a lot
of the soldiers we have on here, people who have PTSD. A lot
of it is from kids on the battlefield. It's it's from exactly that.
It's hard because I mean sometimes you know, you think, you know,
like I don't want to seek any help or talk to anybody about it,
and you internalize it. Eventually it's going to come out. Yeah, you're
gonna deal with it some way, you know, whether it's through addictions or
through some sort of thing you're gonna have. It's gonna be hard for you.
And it caught up to me later in life. It's, you know,
because I held all that stuff in so I do a lot around that
area, like helping people in that area, you know, just to talk
about PTSD and things like that and cheer my story with them, you know,
helps the open up. Did you guys run that killer down? Oh?
Yeah, yeah, he got the death sentence. Yeah. Tragic,
I mean tragic Jesus Christ. Tragic. Well, but I mean, like
you said, I mean thank god that you know, well, you were
one of them. But all of these guys who work cases like that,
oh my god. As you point out, it takes a real toll on
it does on the cops. I mean, I remember years ago I went
to a conference for police officers and prosecutors who work counter human trafficking cases.
I remember talking to one of the police officers and he said something that was
like so banal, but so striking when you picture his life. He was
there at this conference down in Tampa, and he's like, you know,
I was just standing out on the beach today looking out over the ocean.
I thought, damn, it feels good to not have to look at Kiddy
Porton today. So I imagine what that guy's life is like and what he's
going through. And I mean, pour one out for these dudes and women
who do that job. They're really important people. Yeah, especially the women.
A lot of a lot of the agents were female agents that work those
cases. And you know, they have kids of their own, they have
families of their own, and yet you know, they were much stronger than
me, you know, like but yeah, So that was the only time
I really had to work anything like that. You know, Terroism kept me
busy. And so you were a drug supervisor out in the LA office,
and then that transferred over into the Joint Terrorism Task Force the JTTF. For
folks out there who don't understand that, can you explain what the JTTF is?
Why that was created. Yeah, so it was created, you know,
post nine to eleven in order to form task forces in which you could
bring in your state, local partners, other federal agencies. They all have
their specialties and they all have different things they bring to the fight. And
so the JTTF is basically that. And each office had a JTTF and some
have multiple jgtfs. Task Forces in LA being as big as it was,
they had started one in Orange County. You know, obviously the population of
Orange County and there was a lot going on, and it was done in
conjunction with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, and and uh, I remember,
you know, I remember my boss calling me in and telling me one day
like, hey, listen, starting Monday, you're you're no longer your squad
is no longer going to be a drug squad. Your squad is going to
be a terrorism squad. Wow. And I was like terrorism, you know,
It's like, I don't know how to work terrorism. It's like and
and he says, well, you know how to work task forces. And
that was the difference. Like, because what happens after nine to eleven.
Everybody, like not everybody, but a lot of people transition from criminal work
into counter terrorism work. And one of the things that happened because of that
is the way we worked criminal cases. We worked always with partners, So
you know, I was the first thing I was saying, well, who's
our CIA person, who's our like who are partners? Bring them in,
Like, let's let's let's let's leverage everybody's expertise, because that's how we did
it on the criminal side. And so that whole JTTF concept was all around
that, and it was a lot of the criminal guys that came in that
brought that type of work experience to the table. So to me, it
was more about learning kind of the different roles of national security and the guidelines
that that that govern how you do national security investigations versus how you do criminal
investigations. I want to talk a little bit about, like also, since
we're going down this road in this topic, the differences between the two because
an a counter terrorism investigation, I imagine you guys are doing a lot of
surveillance, a lot of watching. When a lot of FBI guys want to
make arrests, they want to work those cases and put someone in handcuffs,
right, Yeah, It's funny because you know, don't get me wrong,
Like an FBI agent is going to do whatever they need you to do.
Like if you're you're signed to work counter intel, counter terrorism, cyber or
whatever, you're doing it. Most most of us, I guess, I'll
say that, at least when I was coming, wanted to like catch bad
guys, right, you know, letch bank robbers, bank robbers, like
the FBI agents put the cuffs on the bad guys, put them in jail.
There's a there's this kind of instant gratification you get from your work.
You know, you're like and uh, and so you work in fugitives and
you're doing a lot of that kind of stuff. But and and even going
to cases trial and learning what it's like to go to court. And then
you work some of these counter terroristies and national security cases, and they they
don't always provide that kind of instant gratification. You're working long long terms.
A lot of stuff that you're doing is is in support of other agencies and
things like that. And so it became a bit of a challenge to try
to kind of recruit people from the criminal squads to kind of come and fill
the JTTF or the terrorism squads. But you know, like I said,
you gotta do what you gotta do. But but yeah, there's there's there's
a difference work in those kind of you spend some time out there in LA
working both drugs and terrorism. Yeah, could you describe, like what's the
from an FBI agent's perspective, what's the criminality seem like along around Los Angeles?
I mean I imagine it's like it's literally an underworld unto itself. Right.
Oh yeah, yeah, those offices in New York, LA, Washington
Field Office, Big Off, Chicago, Miami, there's a lot, a
lot of work. I remember. I think when I started in LA,
we must have had I think we had about at least twelve, maybe fourteen
drug squads, like squads of agents that work drug cases throughout our territory.
And so you could focus either like on your aor or you know, sometimes
you focus on a particular organization. But yeah, when it came to crime,
I mean, and I like that, you know, I kind of
like working in offices where you you're busy. Yeah, you're busy. I
remember when I got McAllen Texas. It's when you're in Quantico there's this whole
process and week number eight, after you've passed your second legal exam. At
that point they figure, okay, guy's gonna make it. You know,
you think you're taking your second PT exam and your second legal exam, and
so there, I guess, you know, they're comfortable enough now to give
you your orders. You know. So there's this whole kind of ceremonial thing
where at the end of the day, it's usually your Friday. You there's
a big board of the US down at the bottom, and you're all sitting
like in this kind of like stadium style seating in the classrooms, and the
our class counselor or whatever would pull an envelope out of a fish bowl kind
of thing, and then you'd read the name on the front, and then
when they called your name, you'd come down and you'd open your letter and
you'd tell your class where you're going, you know, and you know,
valeis I'm usually last, but in this case the fish bowl thing, you
know, I think I was like a third or fourth person. You know.
I remember what somebody got, like I don't know, Colorado springs or
something like that. I go, wow, that's nice, you know,
and I had. You know, now I think you're allowed to list them
all. You can all fifty six offices. You can put in like number
one to fifty six. Back when I went through, you could pick three
offices that you want to go to. I wanted to go back to Puerto
Rico, but they wouldn't let agents go back to Puerto Rico at that time.
First office agents, you know, I don't know, just figured,
you know, I'm an agent, why can I go back? But anyway,
so I picked at Miami, Atlanta and Charlotte. Like I figured if
I could get there, I can get like a quick flight too. And
so when I opened my letter, it's like you've been assigned to the San
Antonio Division McAllen Resident Agency. And like people are like, oh, you
know you're gonna hate it, blah blah blah blah. Well you had to
pin you you had to go up and put a pin on the map,
and like this is ruly elaborate. Yeah, yeah, you're going you put
a little pin on the map. And I remember looking at the map and
I go, okay, here's Texas. Like I had never lived anywhere like
near Texas, but I was like, okay, here's Texas and here's San
Antonio somewhere in the middle in this area. So I'm looking at that.
Okay, so McAllen, I don't see anywhere, and they're like lower lower,
and I'm like lower. I'm like lower, Like I got all the
way to the bottom, and it was like I was like Mexico. I
think I went to Mexico and I kind of went back up and it was
like pum and I pinned it there and I was like wow, like because
you know, some people were laughing, you know, I don't know then
I And it was funny because there's another pert Rican guy who's like a brother
to me named Erica, named Eric as well, and he was in my
class and he says, oh, man, you're screwed, and I go,
hey, it can't be that bad, you know, It's like and
so he goes he gets his letter and he opens up San Antonio vision McAllen,
and so we both got McAllen. The best thing that ever happened.
I freaking love McCallen Texas. And it's like the cases that we worked and
the other other people that got these little officers in these Colorado springs, nothing
against them, but like you know, hey, they were like, hey,
can you have on this case? There's five pounds coming up on a
controlled delivery? Five pounds like no, like ten thousand pounds maybe, you
know, that's the kind of stuff we were working. So being assigned to
officers like LA, you know, McAllen Texas, those those were blessings for
me. I got to work great cases, you know. And one of
those cases you mentioned to me was the j I S case. Yeah,
the Jazz case was a terrorism case that was after I got right after I
get the the JTTF job in LA shortly. You know, this is this
is two thousand and two, I think, so think about it. So
it's it's not far removed from nine to eleven. We're handling thousands and thousands
of leads. You know, everything is run down, everything, no matter
how crazy it sounds. Somebody in a crystal ball saw something in LA.
Who is it, Let's go figure out who it is. And it was
NonStop, and so most of them, as you would imagine, all wash
out. You know, you look out suspicious, but nothing And I remember
one time in this case. JS case is probably one of the most significant
terrorism cases in the country that's ever been worked in the US, and yet
not a lot of people know about it. I had never heard of it
until you told me. And it's because it's it's anchored by two huge events
that occur in this two week period of time where we're working this case.
Two major events which I'll tell you happened. I remember getting the call my
boss at the time, really good guy, Randy Parson's. He calls me,
and I'm having dinner at the time with my wife and some friends who
flew in from San Antonio, and he says, here, can you step
out? And he goes, hey, this this is a for reals,
Like I go what I could tell by the tone of his voice that something
was different about this particular case. And this case involved the Torrents Police Department.
Some people may may recognize it now when I get into it. The
Torran's Police Department had been tracking down some crips that were some guys that were
robbing some gas stations, and during one of the gas station robberies, uh,
the guy drops his cell phone. The cell phone leads them to an
apartment complex, and the apartment they find all sorts of stuff Al Qaeda literature,
a manual called the jis manual that talks about how they you know,
and it was a it was a radicalized uh person up in fulsome prison that
had radicalized this these guys, this particular guy while he was in prison,
and then when he got out of prison, he went on to build this
organization and to conduct this terrorist attack. And so these guys were originally just
a street gang, yeah yeah, and then in prison, in prison,
one of them was radicalized with Islamic extremism. Yeah. So right, there
was somebody in fulsome prison that was that was radicalizing people that didn't have life
sentences that were going to come back out. And so this particular guy,
he was coming back out, and so he had a mission and it was
all described what he was going to do, how he was going to recruit
people, how he was going to conduct the terrace, how he was going
to find his target, how he's going to conduct the attacks, and it
was all written down. It was like, wait a minute. So they
pick up the guys. Obviously, they pick them up, and both of
these guys are now they are they are in custody at Torrents Police Department.
So I go from Orange County up to Torrents and I remember getting to the
command post. I don't know what time it is. It's in the middle
of the night, and there's a bunch of stuff and we're kind of like
we're really starting to dig into this thing, and we're interviewing the two people
in custody. They're being interviewed at the time, and I remember sitting there
and I look up at the screen and there's this on the TV screen.
It's like, you know, breaking news, and there's this red bus in
London that's got the top blown off of it. So that's the day of
the London attacks. Is the day that we are at the command post.
So, as you can imagine, the whole focus is on that. Now.
Bureau is focused on that, like everybody's doing everything they can to ensure
that that there's nothing else that's gonna you know, what else can we do
to help that case. So we're just plugging away. One of these guys
says that there's twelve other members out there. There's twelve members that we've said
what okay, So we had two and there's twelve unknowns, and they would
give us a first name, they would give us, like one guy wasn't
talking at all, who was radicalized by the first guy. The other guy
was doing. He was talking, he was talking about these twelve people.
And coincidentally, the next morning we had a JTTF executive board meeting. This
is where we brought the leadership of all the different organizations and so I got
in front of them all and I said, hey, here's what's happening.
And so every single person in that room we divvied out kind of you know,
so LA Sheriff had surveillance, you know, LAPD did these particular leads.
DEA was helping, NCIS was help, everybody was helping, and we
divvied out all the work and we were tracking down these twelve people. Tracked
all twelve of them down within a couple of days. Wow, all of
them. I mean, because like DEA and LAPD had a task force where
they they knew they knew that city very very well, and so they were
able to like hit their sources and go and so but ultimately we ended up
taking down that organization with this two So the first event is the London bombings.
The day that Chief Bratton is up on the podium and he's announcing the
indictments and the arrest of this organization who were targeting Jewish l air lax,
the ll counter and synagogue and some other targets. They he announces this and
on the screen you see Bratton and then on the bottom of the screen you
see this big, huge hurricane and that's the day Katrina hits. So Katrina's
hitting as we're taken down the group. So now the whole focus is on
Katrina's you can imagine. So a lot of people don't even know that one
of the biggest kind of cases of potential terrorist attack that was thwarted and that
was worked in this organ You know, how we all came together is kind
of forgotten, but it was. It was. I mean, I slept
on the couch up in La like we we whatever sleep you can get,
like you need a lot. Everybody was working around the clock for two weeks.
It was. It was. It was fascinating to see how we all
came together. Yeah, I mean, it's also interesting that, you know,
given the time frame that these guys that they want to go after the
Israeli National airlines. Yeah, it seems like there are so many I mean,
if they're al Qaeda. Yeah, and ben Laden's big thing was,
you know, attack America. It's it's weird that they instead of attacking America
somewhere, they went straight towards the Jewish community. Yeah. It had something
to do with kind of their their radicalized philosophy. The guy that was up
in Fulsome, you know, he his his views. He was very you
know, anti Israel, and you know that's why they selected those targets.
Uh and uh it was. It was. You know, it's pretty scary
because you know, like who were these fo You know when we when we
found these twelve people, they had been approached by this guy, like they
said, oh yeah, you know, he came up to me, one
of me, part of this group. He gave me a manual. They
have a j S manual and I read it and I thought, like,
I'm not doing this guy stuff. What the hell was j I S.
By the way, it's it's and you're gonna catch me here is like Jamal
is something that was but not j it was it was it was an acronym
of the leader in Folsome had called this organization, so it was something.
It was something he came up with the name and and it was three words
j I and we just used that as the initials of it, but it
was not Jamal, it was it was a separate organization. And so when
you rolled up these twelve guys, I mean how did you find them?
I mean were it was like guy living with his mom, guy, I
mean what, yeah, we had little we had little, small leads.
He frequents this place like this, right, and he's best friends with a
guy in a wheelchair, I mean stuff like that, and we're like,
okay, and his name is you know whatever, like Tom or something like
that, you know, and so yeah, just good old fashion police work,
you know. They they go, you know, guy, some guy
in the wheelchair, blah, you know, one by one everybody, you
know what, and how did how did the prosecution go? It went extremely
well. Yeah, I think we never went to trial. I mean they
all played out, you know, and they all got their sentences. But
no, no, no, these were like material support cases. These are
like major counter chairs and charges. They all played out and they all get
their senses. That's another reason a lot of people don't know about it because
it everyone's trials. It didn't get the you know, the publicity. But
it's a fascinating case like how that thing developed and it shows, you know,
just how when we come together as partners, and there was never at
any time. I mean I understand that this guy had like Alcado literature and
admired that had aspirations, but there was no overseas nexus for this particular group.
No, that's really interesting. Yeah there was. Yeah, there wasn't
an overseas connection for the group other than the fact that the guy was inspired
by some of the folks. But never there was there any direct contact with
somebody. So as you go through this period of time, I mean we
get to about two thousand and eight, you're in Oh, well, first,
let's talk about Terror Screening Center. Yeah. Yeah, so that's my
first job in the in the senior executive service ranks, the SEES ranks,
and I was a deputy director there and they recently stood up and that's the
center, you know, the multi agency center again that handles kind of watch
listing and the whole well terrace, you know that terist watch list. Imagine
that was a huge headache. That was it was really busy. You know
again, it was we were just standing it up, so we were building
all the different protocols. But uh, but yeah, again it's another multi
agency environment. I'm very comfortable in that space, great people. And uh
and I did that for it only a year. I mean I was there
for about a year. When I got I got worried about this position in
Los Angeles as the head of intelligence for the Special Agent in charge of the
Intelligence Branch in Los Angeles. And and you know, I was asked that
would be something I was interested in, and uh, I love LA.
So I was like, I'll go back to LA. And but I was
like, I don't know anythink about this intelligence stuff. You know, this
is kind of after the nine Learving Commission and the Terrorism Reform Act that that
establishes, you know, the the National Security Branch of the FBI and all
this other stuff. And so I was the first specially in charge of intelligence
in the field. And then that folded under like the Patriot Act. It
was a separate bill. Yeah, it's just it was the Terrorism Prevention Act,
the two thousand and four after after, but it establishes the you know
the role of the Executive Assistant Director of the FBI's Intelligence Branch and uh.
And it sets up the mandate of the FBI's mission to also, you know,
embrace the criminal work that we do, but also accept our role as
part of the intelligence community, and you know, how we operate in the
domestic environment, you know, and the different regulations and guidelines that guide to
all that, but how we work with our partner agencies domestically. And so
when I got that job, I knew nothing about intelligence as you would think
of it from the I see the intelligence community aspect. So, I mean,
are we talking about running human intelligence networks? Human intelligence? I mean,
the Bureau is a human is kind of our bread and butter, you
know, it's you know, obviously through court orders and authorizations we can do
we can collect different ways, but human is a huge part of it.
You know. That's what we do as agents. I remember somebody once said,
like, and it's really interesting, like our role as agents is you
know, how we how we communicate and we're able to get information from you
know, through building relationships and different things that we do. So it's it's
it's interesting because when when we move out kind of into this world of this
kind of transformation that occurs, even even the idea of transforming the FBI left
some people with a little bit of a bitter feeling of because you know,
I mean, I worked the FBI thirty three years total. I was just
a kid when I start. I love that organization and the men and women
of the FBI. I mean, I wish everybody could see the dedication of
these folks have. I mean, they're regular human being, They're regular Americans,
and they wake up every day. You know. I just love that
organization. And so when you talk about the special agent rank, the eighteen
eleven rank, and now you're telling them that you know, we're transforming,
you know, they're like, wait a minute. And so I think when
my role, one of the things, because I kind of got tagged,
is kind of like the intel guy. You know, I didn't start off
I told you about my career. I was like, I started off working
drugs, violent crime, stuff like that. But when I got to the
intelligence branch and that side of the house, I think the first thing that
I was hit by was the fact that there was a translation problem. There
was like anytime you're going to transform an organization, a big organization such like
the FBI or any organization, it's commitment versus compliance. That's a huge thing
for me. If you try to transform an organization through compliance, it's going
to fail because they're going to do things as long as you're watching them,
and you're like, on the other hand, if you spend the time talking
to them, letting them understand so that they're committed to it as much as
you are, they believe in it as much, then they'll do it when
you're not looking because they feel it's important, that's what they want to do.
And I just felt like at that time we were very compliance driven.
Everybody knew they had to do X, Y and Z, and they had
to produce this and that and they but nobody, even though we tried,
it just had not It had not been enough. And so I said,
I'm going to go out to every field office and I'm going to talk to
every agent, every and I'm going to explain like what it is that we're
doing and showing them that what we're talking about is stuff that we have done
our entire life. When I told you the story abou Juanito, Yeah,
And I would use that story to explain to them, like I had requirements,
Intel requirements, where do they cross their dope? Who you know?
You know, who are they sending money to? Those are my requirements.
So I would develop sources and I would specifically go to collect that information.
Right. All we were telling them now is that you have to understand,
like when you're working your cases and you're you have the certain authorities that you
can operate under that allows you to kind of ask other questions that maybe our
our partners might be interested in. That's all we're asking. We're not asking
you just stop doing this great work this and so by explaining to them and
them realizing, you know, there's almost like, well, why did you
just say that in the first place, you know, Like, but so
if I'm if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that the FBI Directorate of
Intelligence was like a clearinghouse of information that everything would come into you guys,
and you disseminate it where it needs to go. Not necessarily, the Director
of Intelligence was basically it's it's a director that basically governed the way that we
developed our analytic workforce. So it had oversight of of workforce plan development,
formalized a lot of yeah, but we were yeah, we formalized a lot
of that, you know, training budgets. I mean, it's a headquarters
entity, but our field offices are set up so that they're each office has
its intelligence division within the field offices. You know, they call them squads
branches, and so, uh, we had that throughout the and all the
d I just established policies and governance over that, and that's kind of that's
the difference. So I did it in the field from a field perspective,
but also went back to headquarters and ran ran the program from the national level
as well. Uh so, I mean during that time, I mean you
say, what kind of stuff you were working on? Were these like counter
terrorism investigations drug when I was in the d I or like when I was
like when you were working in FBI intelligence. Yeah, so No, from
the d ICE perspective, we weren't involved in investigator. I mean, the
bereals divided up and we had our own you know, and uh yeah,
so we didn't work cases like that. I mean, we worked with our
partner agencies. We like I said, a lot of a lot of a
lot of what you do at headquarters are setting up national policies and guidance and
budgets and things like that. So but yeah, are my other my other
partner ads and executive assistant directors that had those responsibilities, you know, work
the criminal counter teraars and cases, and this is about Is this about the
time that they ask you to be an assistant director? Yeah, so I
get I get asked to come back to headquarters. This was I was in
LA as a special Agent in charge. I'm asked to come back to headquarters
to be the acting deputy assistant director of the d I. So that's there's
an assistant director that runs the director of Intelligence, and then there's there.
At the time, there were three deputy assistant directors, and I'm asked,
can you come back for a couple of weeks. And I remember my boss
in LA saying, like, you know, you're never coming back. I
go, no, they just need me for two weeks, but turned up
me seven years. Like he was right. I never came back, and
I ended up in headquarters. Because I ended up, they moved me into
that role as a deputy assistant director. And then I got promoted to be
the assistant director when Director Moller was there, and then and then I became
the executive assistant director when Director Comy was there. Do you want to tell
the story about Director Moler when you got almost got yourself fired? Yeah?
Yeah, right, So you know I worked for all three directors, and
you know, they all had their different styles, and I enjoyed working for
all three of them. Uh, Director Mohler, he was you know,
I loved his style because like you knew, you knew if you messed up,
you knew you messed up like he you you just knew it. And
and I liked his former marine style and you know he but he was in
intimidating, I will say that. And I every morning, we would brief
him every morning, and before we brief him, we have like four pre
briefs, so they start like five point fifty in the morning. They're briefefing
me, then we go to the next person. We kind of go up
the chain until we end up in director Mueller's conference room for the morning briefs.
And you have to be prepared. So like the one thing you're you
don't want to don't try to bullshit him. If you're not prepared, he's
going to know it. So you just you prepare yourself. And that's important,
right, So every morning I got prepared and we get there super So
one thing you also knew is like don't be late. So you can imagine
right before his brief were lined up ready to go. All the people are
gonna be in the brief. There's all the different assistant directors were lined up
in the hallway and they're waiting for his secretary to say you can come in
now. Then we'd all pile into the conference room. And then his office
is in the back. And then he comes in at the time and he
sits at the main chair, and you know, the brief goes on.
The brief starts on. You got to know because he asked very he's detailed
questions and so you and so every time you survive one of those things,
you're like, okay, you know, so I had another live another day
and made it through that brief. But I remember one time I was supposed
to brief him on something that was not a morning brief, and it's you
know, it was a brief that I was I was working a special project.
It was called the Directors, one of his party initiatives, and I
was the briefer. Okay, And so you know, Director Mueller would sit
in the main chair. The would be a conference room over here to this
side, here to his right as the deputy director, and then right here
to the left is that first chair. That's where the briefer sits okay,
that was my chair, and then around the ROO table there are all the
other executives. And so the meeting was supposed to be at ten o'clock in
the morning. I make up some of these times just because I don't remember
exactly the times. But it was ten o'clock in the morning, i'd say,
and I remember getting there at nine forty five. Now I had prepared
this. I probably didn't slap. I mean, I was just focused because
I'm in a brief Director Moler. And so I get to the secretary and
I just want to let her know that I'm fifteen minutes early, but i'll
be out here in case she needs me. And before I get even open
my mouth to say like, I'm early, she's like, where have you
been? And I go, I was in my office. I'm just I'm
here early because this meeting started at nine to thirty, so it's fifteen minutes
already into it. And she had sent an email to my secretary to tell
me about the time change, which obviously I didn't even know. And so
I see the door and I have finally go like, oh my god,
because I have to open the door, and I could see. I could
just I know there's gonna be a conference room table, there's gonna be a
bunch of executives, and there's gonna be director Moler looking right at me.
And I almost didn't want to go in, but I figured this one I'm
fired, you know, Okay, it's my career's over. So I just
opened the door. And it was like, you know, those movies were
like the jukebox stops and everybody's just like looks. And here I come walking
what seems to be like a mile to get to my little chair right in
the front there. And it's interesting because around the room there's almost like this
sense of, oh, this is gonna be good. Eric's intro, this
is gonna be good. He's gonna get filayed right here. And so I
get up to the front chair. There's, you know, in this case,
here I am, Director Mueller's right here. And as I'm kind of
starting to pass out papers that you know, which is like I said,
the guy, the guy that was sitting on my side, he knew about
the product. He already started kicked it off, so they already started.
He was winging it. So as I'm doing this, he says, director
Moto says something to me, but I can't. I can't hear him.
I don't hear him. I'm like, I'm at this point, I'm thinking,
like, what's gonna happen to me? And so at the time the
general counsel, she says, I don't think he heard you. And then
he said, did you hear what I said? And I said, no,
sir, I didn't hear you. And he says, I said,
you're going to like anchorage this time of the year, and I said,
I said, you do know I'm Puerto Rican, right, and it was
in I would have never said something like that to him, but at this
point, you know, I'm fired, right, And I wasn't being disrespectful,
it's just just what came out. And he started laughing like a belly
laugh like he was really he thought that was just so funny, and it
kind of calmed me down, you know, and I was I was able
to get through my brief, actually the best brief I've ever done, because
you know, I didn't think I had a job after that. I figured,
you know whatever, I'm going back to work cases, you know,
and nailed the brief. And then as I was getting up, he said,
Hey, just want to let you know it's okay. This stuff like
that happens, you know, and he just made me feel real good about
it. And it just like I admired that about him that you know,
he he was tough, you know, he had to be tough. Yeah,
but he also you know, he was a good guy too, you
know. But that was that was the scariest time. That was the scariest
thing that ever happened to me. But I don't even know if he remembers
that, but I remember it. Before we're moving on any other interesting things
about you know, your time as the assistant director the first time that you
want to mention, I'm not really. I mean, like I said,
it was a lot. It was a time of change, and I take
a lot of pride and kind of been able to be part of that,
you know, try to make sure that we do everything and keep our country
safe. But no, I mean it's I enjoyed the people I had to
around me, great people. It was a good time. And after that,
you left the bureau, yeah, and took a job doing security for
Disney, Yes, the Walt Disney Company. Yeah, that was twenty sixteen.
You know, when you're an agent any eighteen eleven kind of was the
designation, Like you could retire at fifty then you're we were mandatory at fifty
seven, and so anywhere between that time people are usually leaving. And so
I was just about to turn fifty and this is twenty sixteen, and I
had gotten the job at at Disney as head of security for their parks and
resorts segments. So I left the Bureau on a Friday and I started in
Burbank on a Monday. So I went right into that, you know,
and and my I had a huge span of control. So basically anything that
was a theme park, a ship, a store, or a hotel resort
around the world fell under my my role as the vice president for that segment.
And it was I tell you I tell you man that there that's a
that's a hard job because Disney is I mean, one, they have an
incredible security program, you know, because security is foremost, you know,
keeping all the guests and cast members safe. But there's like a saying like
the sun never sets on a Disney park because like I would fall asleep if
you call it that, and then I'd wake up in the morning and I'd
just dread looking at my phone because while I was sleep in, Paris was
up and running. You know, you know, Orlando and Disneyland and Anaheim
there there there sleep, but but Paris is up and and I look at
my phone and it was like almost every day there's and it's it's it's one
of these things because the Disney brand attracts a lot of attention from the media.
So you know, I was almost like, I'm the vice president of
de escalation, like I have to like, okay, try to keep things
crisis man. Yeah, from because like for example, and then in Paris,
you know that there's a you know, there's a train station and chess
that actually it's a public train station that when you come out of the train
station, there's there's I mean, I don't know, it's like maybe half
a football field from the train station to the gates of the Disney you know,
where you come in. And so people becoming they have suitcases with them
because they're tr traveling maybe through up to Germany or something on this train,
and then they can't bring their suitcases in, so they'll they'll they'll maybe they'll
hide it, you know, behind a tree or something like that. And
so now you have a suspicious package there, you got to run the dogs,
you gotta and then if the media picked up on it, it'll be
the big story. You know, Disneyland pairs shut down for possible this,
and it was these little things like this that that could turn into like and
so now you're on calls and you've got executives in different parks and you're trying
to and I did that for almost four years, and it takes it takes
a toll. I mean, that's that's I mean, if you think about
it, we were dealing with Super Bowl level of attendance crowds every day in
six of these parks around the world, every day screening. I think there
was like one hundred and fifty million people we'd screened a year coming in through
bag check and everything. And so you could just imagine what it's like just
because and so so I could only do that for so long. I did
it for almost four years, and then I just felt like it was time
for me. Were there any like big active threats that had to be mitigated
during that timeframe, I mean, nothing like you would you would think of
that sense, But like Disney, the it's iconic and it attracted a lot
of attention. So it wasn't uncommon that you would see somebody you know that
would say something or write something and mention Disney, you know, and then
then we would take that extremely seriously, like what is it all about?
So we work with our partners to understand what that threat was. But but
most of the times it was just it was just the brand that attracted a
lot of attention, right, And I imagine you know, security encompasses a
lot of things, not just terrorism, but like husband beats up his wife,
or hotel or something, you know something. Oh yeah, everything everything
from you know, just the crowd control, like you know, you know
when we open into park in Shanghai for example, you know it's it's you
know. You you would sometimes you would had you know, guests who didn't
understand, like you know, for example, like you get off a ride,
you know, Pirates of the Caribbean for example, you know, ride's
over, what do you do? Everybody knows you get up, you walk
over here on this side and you exit. Next road comes in, you
know, but like sometimes they wouldn't get up because they want to do it
again. You know. It's like, well, you can't do it again,
you know, little things like this and then would cause scuffles, culture
difference, cultural things between them and the cast members, and then little things
like that, you know, but you know there could be just think of
there, like many cities that are going on, and like I was,
like the chief of police of It's so funny you mentioned that because like I'm
having flashbacks to when I went to it was a theme park. I probably
shouldn't even tell the story, but I just I just bring it up.
My my at a theme park with my daughter and my ex mother in law
who is not American, and she did exactly that on the ride. Oh
really, well, we're gonna We're gonna ride it again. Yeah. It
caused the big sea Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I mean in the US,
you're trained, you know, you just get up, you know,
but and you're opening these parks in different parts of the world and they're new
to it, you know. But for the time, it all, you
know, all right, breaks, it all starts to click right right,
But you know there's different things, you know, counterfeiting of products for things
like that. It's it just runs the gamut of what you can imagine.
Were there any notable differences from you going from being federal law enforcement and out
private sector. I mean, yeah, you don't. You're not a cop
anymore. You don't have arrest authorities. No, but I imagine you have
a huge budget. Yeah. Well, you know interesting because it's like I
did when I left Disney. I started a podcast on my own called The
Humble Sermon. I don't do it anymore, but it was it was really
it was meant to help people public certain people find it out there if they
look for it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I mean I think I
did like ten episodes maybe, and then and then it was like I think,
my wife times, you need to do something to make some money,
Like because I started a podcasting racket, I didn't have as many followers as
you had, but and I wasn't making any money. I was just kind
of like it was cool because I got to you know, I'd started my
own company at the same time. But my company started in March of twenty
twenty, right in the middle of COVID, so like nothing was happening.
So I started this podcast and it was designed to help a public servants,
military, firefighters, law enforcement, whatever transition from government from private government into
private sector. Roles and like some of some of the complexities with that,
like even how they write their resumes and things they talk about, how they
talk about and stuff like that. And and it's you know, when you're
in public service, if you're let's say you're a police officer, I mean,
you have a lot of skills that you're learning that are so transferable,
so valuable to the private sector. I mean, think about your ability to
connect with others, to de escalate things, to solve problems quickly. Think
think on your toe, all your managed budgets, I mean, all that
you could transfer it. But sometimes the way we describe what we do doesn't
resonate sometimes with like somebody on HR, so I was helping them kind of
do a little, you know, help them with that. It probably the
biggest the biggest thing that you realize is that when when I was in the
FBI, you know, we were kind of like the whole organization was about
national security, and we were we were the focus of what we were doing.
When you go into the private sector, you know, these companies are
you know, it's shareholder value, it's it's it's they're generating revenue or company
you know, and security isn't the primary mission of the Walt Disney Company.
It's an important aspect, right, but it isn't what drives it, you
know. It's like, so you have to be able to integrate with the
operational side and the and the revenue side to make sure that you're incorporating the
security to an extent where you could still be a viable business. And you
kind of keep managing that. But when you I went from being the guy
in the room who knew the most about something because I was in an environment
where I was very comfortable with the intel and whatever I was doing, to
being the guy in the room who knew the least about what they're talking about,
like the whole Disney culture in the way that they spoke and everything like
that. I had to learn all of that and that transition is hard.
But I will say this because there is this thing where a lot of corporations
that are hiring corporate chief security officers. They don't want somebody right out of
government. They want you to to actually have time in the private sector and
then they'll hire you. So it's kind of a tough situation because how am
I going to get that experience? You're not hiring me, right, and
so I remember somebody wants you know, I went through my gauntlet of interviews,
because when you go through these jobs, you're like you're interviewed by everybody,
like the OGC to the head of finance. And one of them asked
me, like, you do you worry about if your your ability to transition
from government into the private sector. You asked me that question, and I
go, you know, actually and he said to Disney, And I said,
actually, I would probably be more worried the other way around, Like
I'm more of the kind of Disney kind of like I am okay with like
you know, working in environments where you know, you have a lot of
different team members and you know, the culture may be different, the way
they speak. I have no issue transitioning here. I'm I think I'm wired
to fit really well in this company. I'd be the other way if you
ask me that that might be where the challenge would come from. But but
it is a challenge. I mean, you just you know, everything's different.
I you know, the way I brief is different, like when you
briefed Mueller, Like you know, you get to the point, you know,
like you know, here it is it's very it's very regimentded. Blob
blo blo boom, You're hitting everything somebod these one is called like a military
brief built. You know, I remember doing I'll tell you a Disney story
because it's it's actually in one of my podcasts and it kind of got a
lot of attention. At the time. I was working for Bob Chapek,
who was my boss, and then Ron Iden, who also was the Chief
Security Office, and I was going to brief Bob Iger on something and uh
and it was it was it was a an operation security plan for something at
Walt Disney World that we put together and we were going to brief Bob Iger.
And it's kind of cool you get to brief Bob Iger, you know,
it was it was it was He's he's not a hard person to brief.
He's a very very nice guy. But I you know, I studied
for my brief just like I would with Mueller. You know, it's like
or anyone call me or Director Ray. You just want to be prepared.
And so when I finished my I remember sitting in front of Bob Ayger's in
front of me. Bob chap Peck is right to his left, and and
Chipick's like looking at me like a lot like and I'm looking at Iiger and
Chippick's like he's just got his eyes locked on me, and and I at
the after the brief, Silver, I I think I nailed it. Like
I walked around going like I think my wife and she asked you, My
wife asked me, like how to go? I nailed it. It's the
best brief I ever gave. Only to find out that Bob Chapik he wanted
to talk to me to give me some feedback on it. And I said,
be fantastic. He said, how great I did? And oh,
it's so great. Did you learn how to brief? No, he said,
for content, you get an A. For delivery, you get a
C. And he goes you get to see because like he had he I
appreciate that he took the time, he said, like forty five minutes to
kind of give me this this feedback. He says, you know, we're
in an entertainment company. We're all about we're storytellers. You know, your
brief was very rigid. You know, it's like it's very you know,
you need to kind of form it in a way and tell a story.
And he like and to me, it was almost like what you want me
to get in her start like telling a story like you knows, like Cinderella,
like you know, like like like in other words, he's like relax,
he said, the way you dress needs to kind of tone down like
I was. I was dressed like a government person, you know, like
I came in very formal, you know, because I had been trained that
that's how you look culture. But no, you know, it's like so
I ended up buying like new clothes. I kind of got a little bit
more disney esque the way I looked, and I appeared in the way because
he was giving that like pink pinstripes. It's just like more like it's like
that more modern executive you know, no tie. You know, you kind
of have a nice sleek look what it is, but it's it's definitely not
the way you dress when you walk it into you know, the director's conference
room. It was great feedback, but those things like that, you know,
where you I'm glad he told me, you know, and I was
able to transition and change and the next time I had a briefing, you
know, I didn't get up there and start tap dancing, but at least
I was much more relaxed, you know, And it makes sense. You've
got to tailor it to the audience, and this audience is exactly exactly.
So that's that's that's an example of kind some of the transitions difficulty. So
that's a great story. But you said that this job did take a toll
on you, and it's like it was a high stress. Oh yeah,
very high stress, very high stress. High stress. I didn't have no
problem in stress. Like I love two minute drill work. I love that.
Stressful environments kind of get me energized. But when you know your stuff,
like you you know what you're doing because you have years and years of
experience versus like your brand new and everything coming out of your mouth is wrong,
you know, Like I would say something and people like what, Okay,
I'm not supposed to say that. Or I would do something They're like,
what, I'm not supposed to do that? And now you're leading a
huge stressful environment. Everybody's focused on you and you just don't. It takes
years to learn this kind of stuff, you know. But so but but
yeah, I actually like being busy. I like that kind of stuff,
and so it was it kind of a relief when they asked you to come
back to the bureau. Yeah, So I don't know if released the word
because remember by this time, I've already I've left Disney, I've started my
company, which nothing's happening, it's COVID, and I got my podcast going.
I really missed the mission part. Like I'm a mission person. I
come from generations of law enforce. My father was a cop, his father
was a cop, and then we have like four generations of police of Puerto
Rico throughout my entire Like family and serving my country and being part of the
FBI and the greater community of public service like that was everything for me,
no matter how cool Disney was. But the cool thing with Disney was I
felt like I was a public servant too because I was keeping families safe,
right, you know what I'm saying, I'm keeping people safe. But I
longed for like the fellowship that comes with being part of something like the FBI.
And when I got that call, man like in three second, yep,
I'll go back and a heartbeat, and I got to experience what most
people probably don't get to experience, like to go back, you know,
into an organization and to be able to continue that mission that work was like
I can't even tell you how happy I was. In fact, I probably
would still be there if it wasn't for the fact that I, you know,
I left to start my my my new company, which is a tech
startup company to help solve like a challenge in technology with public partner partnerships.
You tell us about your second stint at FBI, then you know, yeah,
what what was this job that they asked? So it was to become
the Assistant director what's called the Office of Private Sector. It's like a it's
a smaller strategic arm of the Bureau that that really its focus is to build
relationships and partnerships with our private sector partners that are all kind of facing the
same challenge as we are. You know now with with the way threats have
changed, cyber being a huge focus. Is that a lot of involve also
like corporate counter intelligence, like things that involve national security. Not necessarily,
I mean it could not necessarily. For example, there's something there's these two
huge national programs in the Bureau, the Domestic Security Alliance counts a d SAC,
and these are chief security officers from different companies and these these folks,
they they have to make security decisions every day to keep their companies safe,
you know, and they rely on any information threat information that we can provide
to them, you know, And so we are we are providing information to
them so that allows them to be able to execute their mission to keep their
companies safe. But you know, now, I mean there's a there's a
number out there that's been thrown around the eighty five percent of our critical infrastructures
owned by the private sector. Okay, so the front lines have kind of
shifted, you know, and uh, and there is a huge need for
us to to incorp integrate, you know, again through legal means, like
you know, you know, we're building relationships and we're sharing information and we
could share with them, but we have to go from I always call it
like right now we're partners, we got to be teammates because the folks that
are on the front lines now, that are in these companies without the information
of like, hey, this is a potential risk and to be sure that,
you know, our entire critical infrastructure is at risk. And you know,
I look at like what happened at nine to eleven, with nine to
eleven after the Commission report studies came out and people started to look at the
failures that occurred information sharing between the federal government and the state and local partners.
Was was obvious, like, how are the police officers supposed to do
their job if the at the national and we have information that they need.
Right, So you saw this entire movement to bring the police departments and state
local bares better integrated with the federal side so that we have better information share.
There's work to be done, but it's it's a big improvement than it
was back you know, nine to eleven. I am convinced that we're kind
of heading down a path that some major cyber attach could occur, in which
when you start to analyze what happened, if there's information that that's that person,
that SISO or that chief security officer could have had that could have done
something to kind of help protect it, we didn't get it to them.
We're going to be figuring out why. You know, it's going to be
things like technology. There was an old policy in place, I couldn't do
it stuff, and we could either wait till that happens and then we could
all or we could do something about it. Now, and that's kind of
what my mission is now is to is to do something about it. And
technology is a huge challenge like how we share this information and that's kind of
what I what I'm building my company to help. That's that's really interesting,
like from a public safety standpoint, Yeah, but also I mean a lot
of the things, the conversations we've been having the last couple of years in
regards to China where it's like, how do we do a public private partnership
to protect our information? As you point out, protect our infrastructure. That's
going to be a critical issue in the coming years, isn't it. And
you know there are there are great public private partnership programs in place, you
can put them in all and you know the OSAK which is the overseas version
of d SAC that State Department runs. You know, DHS has an analytic
exchange program that they do. They there's FBI is doing a lot in the
space Police departments NYPD E their shield program, they're doing a lot in that
thing. Again, the whole concept of moving from partners to teammates. If
your teammate, then you need to know you gotta be on the same you
know, same playbook you got to understand. And that's where I think where
we have room to improve is in that era. I'm kind of interested in,
Like when we one of the hold ups, you know potentially here,
I mean, if it's appending imminent terror attack, obviously there's responsibility to inform
people about that. Yeah, but then what do you do when there's other
cases where it's classified information or government proprietary information. How do you share that
responsibly with Yeah? Well, you know, you know, the duty to
warn that's always going to be. If you have information that can help save
lives or can help protect you're going to get that information to them. There
are means to declassify information and to get it to a point in which you
can protect and you know sources and methods and things like that that have caused
it to be classified that and get to something that where you could actually get
that information. When I was there was never a time in which there was
a potential risk or threat to somebody that we we would sit on that.
It's like, nope, we're going to get it to them. We're going
to follow whatever rules that we have to follow, but you're going to get
that information to them. And so there are ways of doing that, you
know, So that's never going to be something that's going to stop us from
making sure people are safe. And how long did you do this job before
you retired a second time? My second retirement so two years. So,
like I said, I would have stayed another year, two three, I'd
still be there. I mean, I loved it that much. I had
the most amazing team of folks, and you know, like the Bureau,
like any of these organizations, is very generational, like in my generation,
you know, I mean, I'd be fifty eight next month. So when
I had retired in sixteen, everybody that I worked with is retired, you
know, and then new leadership has kind of come in into place. But
there are people who worked for me, maybe a couple different levels maybe in
my organization, who are now leading the organization. So I was able to
come back, and I was able to rea to meet all the new people,
like and like I used to know every special agent in charge by first
name across all fifty six field offices like Boom, Bob, Michelle, whoever
it was, pick up the phone talk and then as I left every year,
I would know like ninety percent of them. Then I would know eighty
percent of them by the time I was out six years before I between this
time I left the first time, to say, six years had passed by
and I probably knew like a handful of them, and everybody else was new.
So when I came back as assistant director, now I got t I
get to meet all of them. And you know, I I will say
this, I mean the bureau. You know, there's takes a lot of
heat. You see, you see it in the media, and you know
there's there's times in which it's deserved. I mean sometimes, you know,
our strongest asset is that you know we're humans. Because we're humans and we're
regular people, we can do our job more effectively. But sometimes the weakest
link is that we're humans, right, and we make mistakes and things happened.
But I can tell you, like the people that I've worked with,
the folks in the FBI, I mean especially every nine to eleven super Bowls,
weddings, anniversaries, kids, none of that. You missed all those
things because everybody was focused on keeping people safe. Anytime you saw an event,
everybody's laughing and joking and everybody's having a good time. There are hundreds
and thousands of people that are working NonStop to make sure that you can do
that. And that's the people that I that's the bureau I saw. So
when I was like you get to come back, of course I'm coming back,
you know, it's like why wouldn't I. But they're just the most
amazing people. And then to being part of a community of public services,
like that's the best thing ever. You know. Yeah, it sounds like
you really enjoyed the camaraderie and the culture. Love it, love it,
love that, and I missed it. I really did miss it. And
you know, so, hey, they asked me come back and do it
three times. Do tell us about what you're doing now. You're fully into
the private sector. Now, have a couple of different business endeavors and companies
that you're running. Tell us about those. Yeah, I really, I
really have one company. The first one I started back in twenty twenty,
I think made about five bucks. I don't know how much money I made
that one that that's no longer. Now I have a tech startup company called
intel Sec. We we the biggest challenge that we had, like I mentioned,
was kind of our inability to kind of share information with our partners in
a trusted environment, like we know who you are and and so we built
we built up a collaboration platform we call sector net. We actually launched it
next week. Uh So it's super you know, exciting. You know,
it's scary because I don't have a job, so I'll be CouchSurfing if this
thing doesn't work. But I'm I'm convinced that it really is going to help
solve a problem that we have in government right now and in this area of
public private partnerships. And so that's that's kind of the big thing. Like
I said, I feel like I was uniquely positioned because I spent time on
the corporate security side and I saw what its life was like there, and
I've spent time on the government side that I've lived both of those worlds,
and I've led teams to understand like what it is that's keeping us from getting
to that level of maturity that we have to get to. And that's kind
of my mistion. Can you talk at all about what that challenge is that
you're trying to solve. Yeah, So, for example, there's information like
that that the government provides to its private sector partners and you know, like
little advisories that they'll say, I here's some malware that you need to be
familiar with. So SISA and organizations are providing this to folks. The Bureau
is providing information to corporate security programs about threats, you know, the threats
of different things that are merging and so on, and this work is actually
happening. The challenge is that the way that the information is being provided to
them because we're we're on separate technology platforms. You know, the government has
its platforms, the pricery has platforms, and the two of them aren't connected.
You know, a lot of times they'll get sloppy in how we do
it. So we may take something and just put a huge distroy list on
it and send it out. Well, you don't even know if the person
who had that is the same person anymore, and so there's a lot of
vulnerabilities. And then each of the different agencies that are doing this kind of
create their own way of doing it. Like, you know, we created
a portal and you got to log in to this portal and read it.
But then if you want this here, you created another portal, and an
agency created another portal. So here you are on the private sector with fifteen
different passwords and log and check each of these things every it's not standardized,
and so I started thinking, like, how can we make it so that
we could all coexist on one platform and that we could then share and know.
So we call it collaborate with confidence because we use authentication protocols and make
sure when you're coming in you are who you say you are. And then
when you're in that environment, you can you can talk and you can share
information at a controlled and classified level. So it's not secret top secret information.
We're talking about this information that's already been shared. It's to share,
yes, cleared to share, and we're just centralizing and making it super easy
for everybody to be able to access that information. And it's so desperately needed,
and I, you know, I'm so excited about getting that out there
and creating kind of a just a better way of keeping our country safe.
And you were telling me earlier that the website for its launching next week.
Yeah, if you want to tease it out though, for people to go
and soak out when. Yeah, we're we're going to be on the the
Azure Government cloud side and so it's sectornet dot us is going to be the
way you log into our website and then to become a member of Sector net
to to be which are these different agencies that are whether you're police department,
governations or a private sector person. Then there's ways that you could request to
become a member of Sector net and to be part of that community. So
so yeah, so that'll be a big, big deal for us. And
uh, it's it's like a traditional tech startup. It's a small group of
people, you know, handpicked that that it worked tirelessly to get this done.
But yeah, super excited. That's awesome. I mean we covered a
lot here, But I mean, is there anything that I missed any Yeah,
big career highlights or anythings about transitioning out of federal service, anything that
you you'd like to talk about that I didn't ask. Yeah, no,
I think I think we covered a lot. It's been it's been a lot
of fun. I do want to kind of put a plug in for There's
a group called the Green Beret Project and these are folks, a lot of
folks in soft community that are coming together and helping kind of inner city kids
around kind of the Dover Baltimore area. Wow, these these folks. You
know, it's a small team of people and you know, hopefully I can
put a link on this to actually get people to see the work that they're
doing. Because one of the cool things about the Green Beret Project is like
they won't just find kids that need you know, help kind of. You
know, they're in their environments now, you know, they they're maybe their
parents are in prison, they've they're they're covered surrounded by crime, and you
know, here these men and women come and they help these kids. But
they don't just like, hey, come over here, we're going to have
this barbecue, and where they stay with them, and they stay with them
throughout the journey of not only just helping them get through this adversity that they're
experiencing in their communities, but get them jobs. And they're putting these kids
into you know, companies and and work. There's there's one kid who's applied
to be an FBI agent. You know, it's like unbelievable, and they're
doing it just you know, with limited funding. They're doing it with limited
you know resources that I never heard of it before, and like I said,
it's it's it's perfect for you know, your audience. You know,
which you know, these these folks who you know, they take them to
they do do cool things. I mean we do on hiking trips, on
whitewrod or rafting, you know, just giving them a sense of kind of
like sometimes filling that gap of you're not alone, We're here to help you.
And it's just an amazing, amazing thing that happens. And I just
wanted to put a plug in for that. That's so cool. And I
know it isn't the intent of the project, but like I really believe that,
you know, Special Operations will go ahead and put a finger on that.
I wish they did a little bit of better job reaching out to some
of the inner city kids and telling them about some of these opportunities that exists
in the military. I'll tell you, man, you know, who doesn't
look up to somebody in Special Forces and look up with like, you know,
I want to be like you or you know, if you say it,
like I believe it. You know, it's like that's perfect leadership right
there. You know. It's like I just know, like when these kids
are around these guys, they're motivated to want to do better and to be
better, you know, and so we just need to do more of it.
That's really cool. Yeah, do we have questions for Eric? We
have a couple from m Corbin. Thanks for your work. Commitment versus thanks
for your work. Commitment versus compliance is a very nuanced take care to split
the hairs on the militarization of various narcotics organizations and the interplay on spheres of
influence and the interplay of on spheres of influence that have on them. I
kind of I think I heard two. Was there two questions? The one
about commitment versus compliance? Is that? Yeah, and to split the hairs
about on the militarization of various narcotics organizations. Okay, So on the commitment
versus compliance thing, I mean, you can you know I didn't make this
up. I mean, if you googled commitment versus compliance leadership style, it's
it's basically that. It's it's putting the work up front and creating an environment
in which you explain to the folks on your team why this is important,
why we're doing what we're doing anything. I mean, I think you should
lead that way anyway. A lot of times. One of the one of
the simple ways of doing something like that is if you have a team,
and you're going to set your goals and objectives and your strategy. A lot
of times the manager sits there and comes up with it, you know,
bring your team together, let's all collectively determine what we're going to do,
so that now there's buy in and there's commitment because we've all together to say
this, versus compliance where the leader will do it and say here's our ten
things we're gonna do this year, do it or else that's the more compliance
guy, you know. For that, for that to be effective, I
mean I agree with you. For for that to be effective, I just
point out the boss selling it, of course, And like I can tell
that you're very passionate about these subjects, like oh, these things matter to
you and that. But that sort of passion is like infectious too in it
is it is like and you can't b s your team either, like especially
you're gonna like you're surrounded by age, like and you think you're gonna pull
one over on them, like if they'll sniff it out if they think that
you're doing this for the wrong reasons, or you're doing it for some you
know, or you don't even believe in it. You're not gonna pull it,
So you have to be one percent dedicated to the mission yourself and believe
it or else. Yeah, it'll false. As far as about the militarization
of these drug organizations, I don't know how much I could even provide of
any value you on that. I mean, you can you know these organizations
they are going to build arsenals and to try to keep up any way they
possibly can, and they got the money to do it. But you might
want to get one of your guests that actually know a little bit more about
that. It wasn't as big of a thing when I was working drugs back
then as it is now. You know, back back when I was,
there was was a little different environment. So we have one from Isaac in
your professional opinion, Should private companies like Disney et cetera start doing hack back
as part of their cybersecurity pack practices. I don't know if I know what
a hack back is that like offensive hacking. I don't. I can't help
either. I'm sorry. We have one more, yeah, mmc one.
They offered me a job as chief electrician at Disney. I told them I
wouldn't. I won't work for no Mickey mouse outfit. Thanks MMC. Yeah
yeah, yeah, hey you worked for the mouse. I worked for the
mouse. Had a good worked out pretty well, Yeah, I had a
good time. Well. Uh, Eric, I mean thanks a lot for
coming and doing this. Man, I'm glad. I hope you enjoyed yourself.
I remember when you reached out to me, like, of course I'll
do this, you know. So it's always sometimes there's there's some people I
reach out to who are like friends of friends, you know, it's a
little easy. But like I kind of shot you a message on LinkedIn,
like a shot in the dark. Yeah, hey man, yeah, and
I said, of course. I mean once I realized you know who your
your main audience is, like, of course, dem and I just like
love to be involved anyway I can. Yeah, thank you. Anything else
that you want to tell people, anything else you want to plug before we
roll out? No, I think that's it, you know. Yeah.
Uh. Next Friday, we're going to have a State Department Foreign Service officer
on, a guy who had a lot of experience in Afghanistan, experience with
the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, some other hot spots around the world.
Actually, our first foreign Service officer, I think that we've had on the
show. Yeah, and then we'll be back on is it Monday, d
the eighth. We'll be back on Monday with Adam Gamal. He is the
guy who authored the book The Unit about an Army Special Mission Unit. I'll
let Adam describe all of that. Yeah, he'll be here in studio.
We're gonna have a black box over his face because we can't reveal his identity,
all this good stuff, but it's gonna be a really fun interview.
So please join us on Friday and Monday. Eric again, thank you,
ye and we'll see all of you guys on Friday and then Monday. Take
care out there, have a good night.