Assistant Director For Intelligence at FBI | Eric Velez | Ep. 274

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out at patreon dot com. Slash the Teamhouse, Special Operations Coberts SB and 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.