Morgan Friedman: Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. Very excited to have Eric Robinson on with me today. And I’m also feeling apologetic because I wasted 11 minutes of his life tinkering with the new Streamyard settings to get it recording.
Eric Robinson: Well, we’re hoping not to waste anybody’s time during this interview.
Morgan Friedman: Oh yeah. If we’re gonna waste time, we may as well make it fun. So let’s have some fun. Eric, you had a great story about your favorite client horror story when we were on our prep call, and I’m sure all our listeners are sitting on the edge of their seats to hear your story. I’m all ears.
Eric Robinson: Well, the story is going to be unique and I’ll start with what a unique story it was even leading to this. So I spent about a dozen years in Christian ministry prior to joining the FBI. I left the pulpit of a Baptist church in 2002. The next Sunday I was in Quantico, Virginia, having joined the FBI. And then by chance, the Sunday after that, I preached in the chapel in Quantico because they didn’t have a chaplain. So I spent the past 24 years — just recently retired — investigating just about everything that the bureau does, starting with drugs, gangs, white collar cases, crimes against children, national security, raising human intelligence, that type of thing. But the client story that I was proposing to bring to you was my very first case working on national security or counterterrorism. I had worked about 15 years doing only criminal work in the FBI. And then one day my supervisor called me into his office and said, “We’re moving you to counterterrorism.” And it was apparent that this wasn’t a discussion. This was just an announcement. And I looked at him and said, “You’ve got a dozen people who know counterterrorism better than I do. Why would you put me there?” But he was a drunk and he had his reasons. So I moved on to counterterrorism and I likened it to when your girlfriend breaks up with you and you’re super sad and then you meet the love of your life. Working in national security, I was put on a squad with the best people I’ve ever met and worked with, and it was the most enjoyable time in my career.
Eric Robinson: However, for years, whenever anything involving terrorism came up where we had to read emails or know certain things, I just deleted them because that’s not what I worked on. So here I was, a senior agent going to new agents asking them how do I get access to this program FISAM, and also what is it? I’m told I’m supposed to have this. So I was starting out with very little understanding of how terrorism cases were made. Fortunately, my first counterterrorism case was a criminal case. We had three subjects who were already charged by a buddy of mine that I worked with, and they were charged with providing financial support to Anwar al-Awlaki, who was an al-Qaeda spokesperson. He was a US citizen, later killed by a drone strike ordered by Barack Obama. He was al-Qaeda’s promoter and funding him was illegal. It’s illegal to give any type of material support to any terrorist or terrorist organization. So those charges were already there. These guys were in jail, and one of the leaders of that group was a man named Yaya Farooq Muhammad. And one day we received word from an inmate that Yaya Farooq Muhammad had come to him and said, “I want to kill my judge.” His presumption was that if he got that judge out of the way, a different judge would take his place and would be more lenient, would let him out of jail, and then he could go carry out the killings that he wanted to do.
And you probably assume that this inmate that our terrorist confided in.
Morgan Friedman: Before we get to the inmate, I want to interrupt with one comment. I’ve done a lot of these client horror stories, heard a lot of them, experienced a lot, more than 100 now. And usually a horror story is like a relationship breakdown, losing lots of money. Here it’s not just terrorism, but it’s like life or death, murder. I can’t even imagine being in your position. Usually you’re stressed out thinking, “Oh my god, we might lose millions of dollars for the client.” But here we’re literally talking about murdering judges and killing people. This is over the top.
Eric Robinson: Well, and part of what Yaya Farooq Muhammad — we just called him YFM because it’s a lot to say — had confided to the fellow inmate that he wanted to go to the Mall of America and carry out a mass homicide. They had discussed putting explosives in bridge stanchions to blow up bridges. He had also drawn up plans for a terrorist training ground. So he was the real deal. He had given money to a real terrorist, but he himself was looking for an opportunity to kill Americans if he could.
Eric Robinson: And this fellow inmate — you wonder, okay, is this another Muslim that he confided in? Is it a Black convert to Islam? The inmate that he confided in was just this redneck guy, around 40-something years old, who had nothing in common whatsoever with YFM. And the only thing I can guess as to why YFM went to this inmate was that in all likelihood the guy probably did know somebody who would kill a judge. He was that kind of street-savvy person. To understand this guy a little better: he was in prison for trading in child pornography. The way he did that was he convinced a 17-year-old girl that he was in the movies and that he could get her in the movies too — the old story. But then he also videotaped them together, which literally is child pornography. I had asked our federal prosecutor who was assisting on this case — it was a state case that he was charged in — I said, “If I had brought you this case, would you charge it?” And he said absolutely not. But every time this informant went in front of his state judge, he acted terribly. He was insubordinate. He would yell and talk back, and the judge would just keep pounding him. So a charge that would have gotten him probably maybe a year in prison — maybe even just time served — had now gotten him looking at 40 years.
Morgan Friedman: By the way, I want to add a comment there, because I think what you just said has an important implication that’s worth teasing out for our viewers. This detail — that the inmate who was confided in didn’t do something that serious, but because of his bad behavior toward the judge, he was punished so much more severely — I feel like this is very typical in client relationships. Sometimes a professional will do something bad, a mistake that’s wrong but in the scheme of things minor, but because you act so terribly around it — like you’ll deny that you did it, you’ll lie, you’ll point fingers, you’ll use strong words attacking the other people — the minor thing that you’ve done is blown out of proportion and turns into a big thing.
Eric Robinson: Well, and coincidentally, I had a different case where the first piece of the investigation was the confession of a woman who had stolen about $150,000 over a period of years from a mom-and-pop heating and air conditioning business. She pleaded guilty. Now she’s going to be sentenced. And I think her attorney did a poor job of coaching her. Her statement just before sentencing was an appeal that she wasn’t really that bad, that she had done many other good things for the family. “Remember when your father was sick and I brought him soup” — it fell terribly with the judge and she got the maximum sentence. It’s easy to say: own it. Five minutes of humility would have served her probably a year of her life better.
Morgan Friedman: I always advise young professionals, young agency owners, just own your mistakes. So many people — their pride gets in the way. I’d rather lower my pride for, as you point out, five minutes, and make changes and improve, rather than suffer permanently.
Eric Robinson: Well, and I think that sometimes with the informant, with the inmate, it was definitely pride. And I think with the woman who stole money, it was a misunderstanding — I’ve already said I was guilty, but now maybe I can convince you that I’m not that bad, and at that point maybe I’ll get less. So it can be that combination of not being willing to break yourself down and own your mistakes, and also a foolish misreading of what people actually want.
Morgan Friedman: Bad strategy, right?
Eric Robinson: They just want to hear: “You’re right. I made a mistake. I am sorry.”
Morgan Friedman: I agree 100%. Now we can get back to the original story.
Eric Robinson: Back to the original story. So I’ve had informants who are prisoners before and I know how difficult it is to get the allowances to place a recorder on them and send them in. You can’t do it that often because then it starts to look suspicious. You have a ruse where you tell people you’re talking to your attorney, whatever it might be. But it’s a difficult thing to do. It’s dangerous and it often doesn’t work. But we took this information, and I was not inclined to follow up on it because the last jailhouse informant I had was telling me stories that I wanted to believe but that ultimately just weren’t true. I had followed him and followed him and wasted months of time. And so now I had this gentleman telling me a story, and I thought, we already have charges. Why are we going to bother? But my buddy who had worked the case was fully invested and he convinced me, let’s go through with it. And at that point I said, “Okay, if you’re willing to.” We put the recorder on the inmate and sent him back in. And then here’s what has to happen: he has to say to the man who wants to kill his judge, “Hey, remember how you were telling me you want to kill the judge? Talk about that again.” And damn it if he didn’t talk about it again — just like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s do this.” He went through the entire plan: this is what I want to do, this is how we get it done. We got the recording back and wow, it’s real. It’s true. Now let’s start trying to work up this case.
Eric Robinson: That entailed having an informant who was quick-thinking. We sent him back in and said, “Tell YFM to call this person — someone you know who’s a hitman — and use a code word, secretive language, to say, this is what I want done. There’ll be a $1,000 down payment, $10,000 total.” And the informant told YFM to say that he wanted to buy a puppy — and that would be the code. Which is interesting because in general in Muslim cultures, which YFM was a part of, dogs are considered filthy and people don’t typically have them as pets. So the idea of buying a puppy would be even more incriminating and harder for him to argue his way out of. So YFM gets on the phone, calls our undercover agent, says he wants to buy a puppy, and then sets in motion the entire plan.
Eric Robinson: Our team went to Chicago to meet with YFM’s wife, who had $1,000 for us — the down payment. And then our undercover showed her a picture — a photoshopped image of her husband’s judge, supposedly shot dead. She showed that to the wife, who supposedly didn’t know what it was from, and just gave him the $1,000. To get that picture, we had to photograph the actual judge and then find somebody who looked like a 70-year-old Lebanese man. So another buddy of mine on the squad was chosen. And I always rib him about that: “Yeah, remember when we needed somebody with the physique of a 70-year-old man? We picked you.” And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s true.” From that point, we had the overt act, which is payment to have someone killed. And that allowed us to bring superseding charges on YFM for attempted murder — specifically for hiring someone to kill his judge. His two accomplices pleaded guilty. He ended up pleading guilty as well. He received 26 and a half years for laying out this plan — not only to support terrorist financing, but also to have his judge killed.
Morgan Friedman: Wow. That is a crazy story. It’s a bit different than a usual client because it’s not quite a client, but it’s such a powerful and awesome story. I would love to analyze it for a few minutes. We already got one lesson out in the sub-story of the redneck and the people acting terribly in court — small crimes turning into big ones. What other lessons would you get from this insane story that you would pass on to young professionals?
Eric Robinson: Well, I’ll hit that second and go back to follow up on the redneck. After he did an amazing job for us, he demanded that our federal prosecutor talk to the judge in his state case and have him released completely. We told him, “We can’t do that. Maybe we can get 5 years off your sentence.” And he just said, “Screw you,” and walked away and got nothing. That was his stubbornness. He served the American people. He did a wonderful job. And he just walked away and said, “I don’t care then.”
Morgan Friedman: Wait — to be clear, he did something good and as a reward he could have gotten, let’s say, 5 years off of his sentence, but he chose not to get those five years, meaning he stayed in jail for those five extra years. That’s what got him 40 years in the first place and kept him from having 35.
Eric Robinson: That was the thread that ran through everything. And to be clear, we experienced a lot of that as we were working with him over the weeks — oh my gosh, I could see why the judge hated him. That stubbornness was common throughout. He was so hard to deal with, and he did a great service to the American people and then gave them the finger.
Morgan Friedman: By the way, just on that detail — there’s so much to say. I see stubbornness a lot, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen stubbornness at that level. People voluntarily willing to spend five extra years in jail — just because they’re their servant.
Eric Robinson: If he had a knife, he would have cut off his nose.
Morgan Friedman: There’s a saying I like that this makes me think of, which is: some people would rather be happy and some people would rather be right, and you can only have one. Choose which one. In my own personal family history, I grew up close to some family members who were in that category — they would rather be right and unhappy. And that really taught me growing up that I would rather be happy, even if it means I’m wrong. This detail you’re sharing is such an incredible example of someone who is so insistent on being right that they’re willing to be unhappy to the point of staying in jail for five more years.
Eric Robinson: Well, and in some ways he was right in that he deserved more. He didn’t deserve 40 years in prison. All of that was true and he stood by that rather than take what he thought were crumbs. It wasn’t worth it at all. And that’s a little insight too into some of the informants that we work with sometimes.
Morgan Friedman: And by the way, I think this is a great lesson for any professional in any industry watching this. You can be right or you can be happy, but you only get one. I usually give that advice talking about yourself — hey, you’re in this conflict now, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? But this is interesting because it also forces you to apply that lens to the other people you’re dealing with. Is this person I’m negotiating with — my boss, my client — the sort of person who wants to get results and doesn’t mind being wrong? Or is he the sort of person who needs to be right, even if the results are worse?
Eric Robinson: Yeah. And to your question of what did I learn from that? My former boss — my drunk boss who had sent me to work for national security — told me that they were moving me because they needed someone with senior leadership ability. As soon as I joined the squad, I let them know I was there to share my experiences, to help out agents who were a little younger: I’ve learned this, I’ve done that. But part of that approach backfired when I worked with my buddy who had the original case, because my experience told me that jailhouse informants are a waste of time. My experience said this will get you burned. We’ve got a bird in the hand, let’s stick with that and focus on other cases. If it had been solely my case, I’m going to say probably I would not have pursued it. And yet we had a younger agent who had not been burdened by past failures like I had, and who was willing to take chances. And so I ended up learning — getting a fresh perspective from someone who hadn’t done as much as me and hadn’t been jaded by failures. I’ve always been open to learning. I’ve always been open to other people’s perspectives.
Eric Robinson: As I continued in my FBI career, I saw more and more younger agents come in who didn’t have my knowledge, but man, they had the drive to work. They were excited. They were willing to take chances that I had already spun my wheels on. And if they’re willing to take chances, I was willing to engage with them and go through with it.
Morgan Friedman: That’s also another good lesson — that this whole initiative to stop Yaya from killing a judge happened because of the enthusiasm of a younger agent. I think it’s natural that time jades people. Time makes you jaded fundamentally, because to do anything successful you have to fail a lot. And even if you do have successes, failure after failure just jades the human soul and makes you cynical and not optimistic. So maybe an extension of that lesson is: it’s important to recognize when you yourself are being a bit too jaded or a bit too pessimistic. And that’s the time to seek out and actively listen to younger people who haven’t yet been through the same cycle.
Eric Robinson: Yeah. It literally was my experience that jailhouse informants are a waste of time. So I had experience in this, and yet I had younger, fresher agents who were willing to go. And at that point for me it was useful. If it had been me alone, maybe not — but I can hitch my wagon to them. If they’re willing to push, okay, that’ll get me over the hump. If you’re willing to take a shot, let’s do it together. I don’t want to muddy your career and your outlook with my bad experiences. If you want to take a shot and learn from it, then okay, let’s go do this.
Morgan Friedman: These are great lessons. Is there anything else?
Eric Robinson: Well, I’ve got one more thing for you. That case ended up winning the Attorney General’s Award. Which I did about 6% of, and my buddy did the majority, but since my name was on the case, I got the Attorney General’s Award as well. So that was a highlight. My first national security case ended up with the highest honor you can receive in the FBI. That was fun.
Morgan Friedman: Wow. I didn’t know that was the highest honor in the FBI, but congrats.
Eric Robinson: Well, and make sure nobody should Google that and check whether that’s true. Just trust me, it definitely is.
Morgan Friedman: Sometimes the publicity — especially of honors — is different than reality. Insiders know. Wow. Is there a final lesson from this incident that we can think of to share?
Eric Robinson: Well, if I can take it from this and go a bit off-base. I worked human intelligence — the gathering and cultivating of informants — later in my career after having spent years working with informants on cases. And I’m working with people, and there’s much to learn about approaching people, making a pitch to them. The men and women I was pitching were not ones I had leverage over — where I could say, look, you’re working for us or you’re going to prison. I was looking for well-positioned individuals who could give us intelligence and who were going to do this because they were just good citizens. Part of that pitch had an appeal in itself: “Hey, do you want to see something exciting? Work for the FBI, help the United States government in this way?” So there’s an appeal to that. But these were men and women sticking their necks out for no good reason otherwise. I’ve had people work with me for long periods through a lot of hardships, taking a lot of chances, just because of loyalty. And so I found that over the years I knew I’d be calling upon these people to do extraordinary things. They weren’t necessarily deeply dangerous things, but they could be. And I was asking them to trust me that I would not place them somewhere where they could get killed. I would protect them. I would protect their identity and their information. And in order to have that available for me in the future, I had to treat them well in the moment.
Eric Robinson: Anyone who understands informants knows they can be a headache. They’re often very needy and demanding. I would get phone calls and think, I know I’m going to have to ask him to do something out of his comfort zone in the future, so I’m going to take this call now. I’m going to treat them well. And when the informants did something successful, I was going to tell them, look, yes, your actions are being talked about by our management. They know your name. They know you’re doing great things and we all appreciate it. Putting a thousand dollars in their pocket always helps, but they were motivated to work and to continue serving the American people because I was willing to put up with annoyances.
Morgan Friedman: That’s a great attitude, a good lesson. When you’re saying that, my mind was still rethinking the story you just told. And I just thought of two additional lessons from your original story that I think might be useful for our listeners. The first is: you never really know what team someone is on. From Yaya’s point of view, he’s thinking, “Oh wow, this other guy — we’re both screwed over by the government, we’re in here together, maybe he can help me.” So he confided in him and trusted him. But Yaya got in trouble because he made the mistake of not stopping to ask himself: wait, am I sure this guy is on my team? How do I know he won’t become an informant? The people you’re working with — what team are they really on?
Morgan Friedman: I think this is a subtle lesson, and especially as you get to the higher levels in corporations and in your career, it’s a powerful one. I’ve experienced this point in powerful ways. I do digital marketing. I’ve run digital marketing for multiple presidential campaigns in Latin America — nothing to do with the US, so don’t blame American politics on me. But I know from experience that people have paid me a lot of money to run these campaigns successfully. But who is really paying me? Maybe I’m being paid by the candidate’s donors, but maybe I’m being paid by someone who’s being paid by someone who’s being paid by some agency from some government in another country. Who knows? It’s really hard to know who’s on your team. I’ve also been in many corporate situations where I really trusted someone and thought they were my friend, but it turns out this other person had gotten them a massive, massive bonus in return for a commitment to loyalty — telling everything to the other side. So when I confided that this other person was causing a disaster, it went right back to the source. I was young, ignorant, and naive and didn’t understand how politics worked. I didn’t realize, oh wow, this guy is really on the other side. So I think that is a useful lesson to learn from Yaya’s mistake — from his eyes. Of course from our eyes, it’s good that he made that mistake, because that’s how we got him.
Eric Robinson: Yeah, absolutely. We go through that vetting process over the years with informants too. If they’re working for us for a period of time, we’re going to have to test them to see how accurate or how loyal they are. It’s a regular process. What is this person doing that really benefits us? Is the information drying up? Are there things I’m sensing that they’re doing that might harm future investigations as well? People are our most important source of information for the FBI, but they’re also the ones who can bring things down.
Morgan Friedman: And I thought of another lesson from your story. I’m fascinated by this dynamic of Yaya trusting this redneck and then ultimately being screwed over by him — though that was good for us. From Yaya’s eyes, it’s interesting that he trusted so completely someone who was so different from him, from such a different culture — Muslim versus a white American guy with nothing in common. What I find interesting about that is: ignoring their particular groups, think about it as person from culture A and person from culture B. A lot of my career has been international. I’m from the US and a lot of my work has been in Argentina, Brazil, Central America, Chile, around Paraguay — around Latin America. And something I’ve found is that when I speak to people from my own culture — let’s say New York Jews, like I know that type of New Yorker so well — I can read them like a book. It’s almost impossible for a fellow New Yorker to deceive me or pull the wool over my eyes, because I know the implications, I know the subtle word choices. Wait, your voice went up a little bit at the end of that phrase — are you really doubting this? I know that culture because I grew up in it.
Morgan Friedman: On the other hand, when I deal with people in a different culture — like me in Latin America, or Yaya with the redneck guy — people from a different culture, just because you’re a foreigner to that language, to those body movements, the implications, the subtleties — it’s happened to me so many times in Latin America where people say things to me and I interpret them to mean one thing, but they really mean something completely different. Even though I’m fluent in the language and I’ve been there a long time, there’s just such subtle detail where things can mean the exact opposite. And I just want to share a quick example of that from just a few days ago. I’m on the board of directors of a large nonprofit in Latin America and in a meeting a few days ago a friend of mine who had never been before came to observe. The meeting was entirely in Spanish. Afterwards I asked my friend how he thought I did. He said — and this is the key emphasis — you’re someone who asks a lot of questions. I thought, wow, that’s great. I did ask so many questions. I took it as a total compliment — he sees I’m trying to get to the bottom of things and figure everything out. Well, it turns out I asked my wife and other friends, and in Argentine Spanish to call someone a “preguntón” literally does mean someone who asks a lot of questions — but it’s only used with the implication of someone who is stopping the action, someone who wants to put roadblocks up, who asks so many questions so that things don’t happen. So I in my naivety had interpreted something said about me in a very negative way as a positive thing. I’m using this as an example of just how fundamentally hard it is when two people from very different cultures, languages, and backgrounds try to work closely together. And I think the lesson here is: be very, very careful when you work closely with people who are from cultures and backgrounds that you don’t know as well as you know your own.
Eric Robinson: Well, and in a sense, I’ve used that also when I’ve interrogated subjects. Post-arrest, I’m not stretching the culture differences too much, but I am very familiar with what’s happening next. So this is a bad guy — maybe he’s been arrested before and knows a little bit — but I know fully he hasn’t been arrested by the FBI before. And so when I come in, I have knowledge that they need much more than they have. I present the situation to them as them needing me as a guide. When I arrest someone and say, “Hey, we’re going to take you to prison,” and that’s all I say — you want to know what’s going on. You want to know what you’re facing. And so I use that. When speaking with someone, I’d say, “Look, we’re arresting you today for these charges. If you’d like to know more about this, we need to have a back-and-forth discussion. I’ll need you to waive your rights.” It’s manipulative, yes, but I’m also very honest with them: at any point if you want to stop answering questions, you can stop. But once they start going, every human has a desire to understand what they’re facing, what their situation is, and I am the one who knows it. They want to know how much I know about them. I’ve had many, countless bad guys say “what’s this about?” — and most of them say it in the sense of I don’t know what’s going on and I need you to be my guide in this. So I play upon that so that these criminals sit down and talk with me and tell me things they really shouldn’t be telling me. But the more they tell me, the more they understand where they sit, and their mind can’t handle the not knowing. They have to have some type of control over their situation, and so I use that to my advantage.
Morgan Friedman: Wow. I love it. I love it. By the way, one of the driving factors for that is they have this human need to know more about what’s happened to them and feel like they control more of the situation. That’s very powerful. Do you have any other tricks along those sorts of lines — psychological tools that you’ve used — that you’d be up for sharing? This is fascinating.
Eric Robinson: Oh yeah. So early on in my career, you get taught how to do interrogations at the FBI academy, but anybody who’s been in for more than a few years doesn’t remember a thing about what was taught. Mainly it’s mirroring and giving people opportunities to minimize — they’ll admit to something, but you know, oh yes, I was there. But the practice over years of interviewing people, I took time to see what was hit or miss. And part of this — going along with people needing to resolve a situation — I found that was something for me too. So when I would ask a question during an interrogation, it’s important to allow for that dead space. So many times I would ask a question and the bad guy starts thinking, how do I answer this? Because most people don’t want to tell complete lies, so they try to find a way where they can feel good about what they’re saying — it’s not completely a lie but it’s also not what I’m asking. And so the mind starts working. And during that 3, 4, 5 seconds — which is actually a good bit of time — I start to feel uncomfortable in the silence. And so I ask you, “Did you kill your wife?” And you pause because you did kill your wife, but you want to think of how to say it. I found myself filling in the gaps — saying, “A lot of people said they saw you with her last. When did you last see her?” Now you don’t have to answer that first question because I’ve negated it. I’ve brought up a new one.
Eric Robinson: But instead of doing that, I realized I need to just ask you, “Did you kill your wife?” — and then we’re going to sit here and wait in silence. It’s upon you to answer the question. I’m not letting you off the hook. I’m not trying to give you excuses. Many times I would witness other agents feeding questions, feeding answers: “You didn’t kill your wife, did you?” Well, that’s not a question. The question should be, “Did you kill your wife?” Where were the open-ended questions — where were you? Not, “Is it true that you were in Chicago during that week?” I’m making these open-ended. So we’re going to have a discussion, much like you do on your podcast. I’m not going to feed you answers. I’m not going to ask yes or no. I’m going to allow you to say all that you’ve got to say.
Morgan Friedman: Yeah, I like that technique. I’ve used it more than once — just sitting there in awkward si lence. And I agree, for me it’s taken training, my own training.
Eric Robinson: Neither did I. But that is the training. And people don’t realize: if I ask you a question and you don’t answer for five seconds, that’s a long time. Ten seconds — now it’s really uncomfortable.
Morgan Friedman: Yeah. And not just that — if you don’t answer for five seconds, you know it’s because the other person is thinking very carefully about how to word their answer, which means something is up.
Eric Robinson: Yeah. And usually I know all the answers, or most of the answers. I’m just looking to put a bow on the case with a confession so we’re done. But when I would arrest somebody, it’s already done. The case is going to be made. We don’t want to take chances. So if you can get a confession, that just takes care of all of it. But there are times I’ve spent hours where it’s just a slow process of asking a question and then letting it play out.
Morgan Friedman: That is a great tip. I’d love to hear one final tip and then we can wrap up. I’m also a Chris Voss fan and I don’t know if —
Eric Robinson: Oh yeah. He’s in this universe of taking CI interrogation-type techniques and writing pop-intellectual books about applying them. So these are interesting variations on those sorts of themes, which have an incredible application in business.
Morgan Friedman: Well, and I think this will apply too.
Eric Robinson: So I took this — some of it’s probably just my nature, but I took it from ministry into working with people in the FBI — and that’s with informants, with witnesses and victims, and even with the bad guys. I’ve never found that coming with curiosity or humanity toward a person has failed to benefit me. Some techniques — some police techniques — are confrontational. You ask, “Did you kill your neighbor?” and when they start giving you a negative, not confessing, a lot of police techniques are to shut them down immediately. But that doesn’t allow for curiosity. So if I ask, “Did you kill your neighbor?” and you say, “You have to understand” — a lot of agents would cut you off and say, “Morgan, you killed your neighbor and I know you did.” But if I’m open and I’m letting you speak, I’m going to get more information. If I let you speak, maybe you would say to me, “You don’t understand. He came at me with a rake and I saw the rage in his eyes.” And now we’re going to deal with that. I have the information I need when I come to arrest someone, but I also want to be open to hear what you have to say, because the way you spin the story is going to tell me more fully what happened. It’s going to tell me what your defense is going to look like, because you are opening up to your rationality and your reason for why you’ve carried out these acts. If you’ve been stealing from old people, if you’ve been bilking investors — when you tell me why you’ve done that, and I don’t judge but approach with curiosity, and I treat you like a human being, which is what I learned in ministry — I’ve never found that that hasn’t been a benefit for me.
Morgan Friedman: You know, that’s a powerful point. Thinking about that personally: I started, grew, and sold some companies. I’m a businessman by career, but by my nature I’m a writer and thinker. I’ve written a couple of bestselling books — Penguin publishes my books, to toot my own horn. What’s interesting is I wrote a book a few years ago about empathy called The Scorpion and the Frog, about how I taught myself to be an empath and to feel and see things from other people’s perspective — something I couldn’t do as a little kid. I thought I was right and I was wrong. And my most recent book, published about eight months ago, is called Meditations on Forgiveness. It’s all about forgiving — basically my attempts to wrestle with my own childhood traumas and family members who did very difficult things to me when I was growing up, and my opening myself to forgive them and move on. But the interesting thing is my books on empathy and forgiveness — you would be shocked how often I quote those books and send them to people in purely business contexts. This sort of humanity and curiosity, empathy, seeing things from their side — forgiveness is fundamentally about not judging the other person, no matter how bad it seems, just letting other people know: I’m not going to judge you. I wrote two books about not judging people, which really makes people trust me, which as you point out opens things up in negotiations and conversations. So your argument here is that basically being curious and humane and non-judgmental is a bit of a superpower in business relationships.
Eric Robinson: And you know, you talk about dealing with trauma. Quite a few of the bad guys I’ve arrested — I worked crimes against children. So many people would say to me, “I don’t know how you can work that. I just want to put a bullet in their heads.” And I’d think, maybe that’s what you want to do, but I want to bring justice. So here I am speaking with someone I know has harmed children — the most despicable thing a human can do. And I’m not going to judge them. Largely it’s because they’re already judging themselves. They hate themselves. Some will argue with you, but they hate who they are. They’re ashamed of it already. I don’t have to bring that. I don’t have to say you’re disgusting. They think that themselves. So rather than that, here comes the law, and I say, “Talk to me about the young man.” And they tell me they loved him. Now, the way they showed their love to the boy was terrible. But if I stop them and say, “You didn’t love him. That’s disgusting.” Okay, now we’re done. But instead, I stay open. I say, “Well, how did you show that?” They tell me how they would go on dates, take him to parks and things. They probably did — because of how they were injured as a child — think that was showing love. And then they tell me how else they expressed their love for the young boy. And that is much more important than me getting my rage out and telling this guy how disgusting he is and how everyone hates him. He hates himself more than anyone else does.
Morgan Friedman: Wow. That is a very powerful approach. And what’s interesting is — I’m Jewish, grew up Jewish, and I know zero about Christianity. But for my book on forgiveness, I interviewed various pastors and had to learn about Christianity because I literally knew nothing about Jesus other than that he’s a Jewish guy that Christians worship. But actually interviewing a whole bunch of pastors, I learned things that were obvious to you but completely non-obvious to me — about how central to Jesus’s message was forgiveness. He has these lines, like as he’s being killed: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Something like that — literally the people that are killing him. And as a non-Christian I found that moving and powerful. I think it’s great that you’re taking the lessons you learned from the ministry and applying them in this very powerful way to give yourself a superpower in your FBI career.
Eric Robinson: It seemed to work for me. And as I said, I never walked away from treating people kindly. There’s an idea in law enforcement that I need to control the situation — the way I show I’m in charge is I throw you up against the wall, I start yelling. But when I come to your house with a judge’s signed warrant, I break down your door, I’ve got 15 guys with me and we’re pointing rifles — I’ve already shown you I’m in charge. I don’t need to puff up even further.
Morgan Friedman: Exactly. Eric, these have been fascinating lessons. I love it. I felt like I was talking to Chris Voss. This is amazing. I already have so much I can internalize and use myself. Thank you for your time. It’s been great getting to know you. And to everyone who’s been watching and made it to the end, thank you for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed it and learned as much as we did. Until next time.
