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Get Me to the Gray, presented by COJA Services Inc., is a podcast about the conversations we’re told we shouldn’t have. Hosted by journalist and author Paula Lehman-Ewing, the show brings people with fundamentally different ways of seeing the world into honest dialogue—where we name what divides us and keep talking anyway.
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GMG_Ep17-Eric_Robinson-MAIN
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): [00:00:00] My guest today is Eric Robinson. Eric spent 24 years as a special agent with the FBI. Before that, he was a Baptist pastor for 12 years. He worked counterterrorism, crimes against children, public corruption, human trafficking, and national security. He served as a SWAT operator for 15 years. He recruited informants, worked human intelligence, and was part of the team that arrested Jon Burge, the Chicago police commander whose torture program put more than 100 Black men in prison on forced confessions over nearly four decades.
Two of his cases won the Attorney General's Award, and his forthcoming book, Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI, is a chronicle of the remarkable situations he found himself in going from the world of faith to the world of law enforcement. Eric, welcome.
Eric Robinson: Thanks, Paula. I appreciate the introduction.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Yeah.
Eric Robinson: So- And to, to clarify, the, all those tactics and stuff were with the FBI, [00:01:00] not the Baptist Church.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Thanks. Yeah. I think we needed that, for sure. .
So before we get into the work itself, I, I wanted the, to give the audience something I think they need to understand why we're having this particular conversation.
So you raised two transgender children, and eventually, the way the institutions you operated within, both the Bureau and the church, treated your family is what part of, is part of what led you to leave both. Is that a fair way to put it?
Eric Robinson: It, it's a significant part of it. So, uh, the story that I tell people without having to get into issues, and it is true, is that much of it had to do with my years investigating domestic terrorists.
So to encapsulate it, I would be looking into these white supremacists who would say on social media these very hateful things, and then right below that would be a cute Bible verse. And then I'd go through their friends list, and I'd see, [00:02:00] oh, that's an elder from my church who clearly doesn't have an issue with this.
So that's, that's part of it as well, of just seeing... And I used to hate this when I was leading churches, talking about hypocrisy, but this felt deeper hypocrisy. Not just the, "Hey, you're not living the life you say you are," but, "You're actually being harmful." Mm-hmm. Transitioning over to my kids, uh, I came to a place where the, the, the breaking line was realizing, m- many of these people hate who my children are and would likely say something monstrous about them.
I don't feel comfortable. I, I don't feel the community. I can, I can honor God on my own. I'm not gonna be part of a community like that.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): And did you feel that the culture in the FBI at that time was to politicize issues like that? Like- Uh ... did that exist, or were you trying to prevent it from existing? [00:03:00]
Eric Robinson: Uh, it, it's, it's, uh, like any office, I assume. You know, there's some people who like to debate, and y- you know, news comes on, topics are there, and people have discussions.
And so the majority of FBI agents are conservative, and yet I also saw many of them were very accepting. Like, when I, I wasn't surprised. I, I shared with one colleague that my kids are transgender. She immediately says, "Tell me more about that, because I wanna know how to respond to people." And, and that, that's the positive that I saw of people, like, they may not espouse it themselves.
They may not be allies, but they want to be sensitive and kind. This colleague was definitely an ally, someone who would support it. And, and others, you know, kind of clunkily came about it. When I, when I told one very conservative colleague that my oldest is a transgender male, she said, [00:04:00] "Oh, that's awesome.
Like, so now you go to sports?" Got... You know, taking that traditional male role and saying, "Now they're male, and now they go fishing with you and hunting." And I go, "Nope. Uh, they still- ... you know, cross stitch." Same stuff. Just feels better saying, "I'm male." So, y- you know, a- and I, I appreciated that learning process as long as people were open.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): I wanna stay with that for a second 'cause I like that we landed on kind of the complexity of humans and your ability to hold both. And one of the questions that I had was- So you, you were working in the FBI, you arrested John Birge.
By the way, thank you for that. Um, you know, a year before Birge is when COINTELPRO was happening in a big way. Uh, Fred Hampton was assassinated in the same city [00:05:00] that John Birge was operating. Um, and so when you have people that join the FBI like yourself, and you know that history, what do you do with that?
Eric Robinson: Uh, I, I, I can say what I did with it, and I tried to be mindful of it, um, while also not... I didn't hold shame, but there had to be a knowledge that the FBI back then can't be that much different than it is now. And so we need to have safeguards and considerations so that those abuses don't slip in either intentionally or without us realizing, here we go.
And with that, my experience was not just that FBI agents were good people, and generally the FBI does hire good people. You have to be pretty clean. You have to be law abiding. You can't be terrible to your neighbors or there'd be some, uh, you know, [00:06:00] background problems. But also the agents sought to do things right constitutionally, going through all the internal administrative steps that safeguard from even getting into illegal activity.
And then I often saw, with myself as well, but saw other agents discussing, "Is this right to do? So I can do this, and I could get away with it. It's not illegal, but should we?" And there were many occasions like that where we were seeking to do, by our arbitrary measure, what was the correct thing. What would be the most moral way to handle this as we confronted, um, here's a group of people that we're looking at.
Should we charge this guy? Definitely charging him, but, you know, what happens to the kids if we take the mom into custody too? And those were regular considerations.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): I'm not disputing that there are good [00:07:00] agents. Okay. But I'm not asking about them as much as I am the institution and the culture.
So an institution that consistently protects itself- Mm-hmm ... over people that it harms, can it be reformed by the good intentions of people inside it, or does that framing become the institution's protection?
Eric Robinson: Well, number one, again, I go back to the self-examination because it's natural for an institution or an individual to protect itself.
That's, that's almost instinctual. The question is, you know, are you doing this to the harm of others or just looking out for your own? When I came in, there was already a morale and mentality of, that, that I just jumped into the stream with, of this is how we do things. We do it right. Um, so w- what I could say is I didn't feel that, um whatever abuses had happened many years [00:08:00] prior, I don't know that they had...
They weren't as accepted. And I think in some cases, and we can talk about this with Burge, when Those abuses are addressed. It may not be fully just, there may not be a full recompense, but now it's in the light, and now people don't just whisper about it. It's, it's in the open as an actual topic. So as the abuses of the FBI in the past came to light, I think there was less by the time I came on board, Robert Mueller being the director- Mm-hmm
and Louis Freeh before him, there was, by how I felt it and sensed it, a purposeful change to following laws to the core. That's not to say, as you see now, that there can't be changes in the institution where it's [00:09:00] more abuses coming back around.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): I'm gonna go back to Hampton because I think the fact that Hampton was killed and then a year later is when this whole torture thing supposedly started, I don't see that as a coincidence. I see it as a sequence. And so when you look at that sequence and you look at the people who worked alongside Birch in Area 2, who knew what was happening in the interrogation rooms, like you said, this kind of like open secret that they had within them.
We don't typically call them torturers, we call them complicit. Mm-hmm. So is there a version of that question that applies to good agents at the FBI,
Eric Robinson: uh, well, yeah, I, a- and I've heard especially with, uh, Black Lives Matter rallies and protests in the past, there's, you know, discussions of you, you know, you can't just say one bad apple because those who allow it are also bad.
Maybe not as bad, but you can't [00:10:00] sit back and let these things go. Part of that was more recently, few years ago, addressed in DOJ's, um, further embellishing of the deadly force policy of putting in some standards to say, "Hey, deadly force is still the same. If, if there is a threat of imme- uh, imminent, uh, death or bodily harm to yourself or another, you can employ deadly force, but now we're gonna run through a lot of examples."
And among those examples are the need to render aid when safe and available. And Those types of things, you know, uh, also stepping in if you see another agent or officer engaging in improper activities, which is almost silly to, to add to deadly force because that's not a deadly force issue, but it's a reminder that we repeated, recited before every [00:11:00] operation.
So I've gone through this 1,000 times. Here's our deadly force policy to include these tangential issues that we need to be aware of, too.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Mm-hmm. I guess one of my questions is when you're inside an institution and you're, and you're questioning things, you know, it's legal but is it moral-
Eric Robinson: Mm-hmm
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): and you come up against a conflict there. I'm wondering if people ask themselves, where does the institution end and I begin? Like, is there a separation there? Because I think the, the detectives at Area 2 probably ask themselves the same question.
Eric Robinson: Yeah. S- so, and this goes back to your, your previous question which I probably got a little away from.
Th- when there is an allowance, when there's the acceptance of these actions, then it makes it... I- it... Just one grows on another. If I'm allowed to do whatever I want to do to a suspect, not even a, you know, kn- known criminal, [00:12:00] then if there's, if there's no- payment on me for what I do, then I will push boundaries.
I will see success. John Burge saw great success because-
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Mm-hmm ...
Eric Robinson: there was no limitations. And if that continues, I can tell myself that I'm doing good, I'm taking criminals off the street. The old adage, if he didn't commit this crime, he's guilty of some other one, and so I don't, I don't feel bad. I'm, people are praising me.
I'm having floats, you know, proposed in my honor b- because I'm doing such a great job. And, and the way I always looked at it is there seems to be, and maybe I'm wrong, like the, there's a swing that goes. So Chicago experiences violence. You know, everything with Burge started, in a sense, to come to light in '82, two cops shot.
Okay, so now doors are open, we can [00:13:00] go in houses, martial law, we do whatever we want, and the public says, "Yeah, we need to stop this violence." And that goes on, and they're successful, and then there's a look back where somebody says, "You guys went too far," and now people start getting fired or suspended, and they go to that.
And inevitably there's a time where, whether it's the public calling for it or there's the acceptance of it, now the violence, the breaking of civil rights swings again.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Yeah. I guess I'm just wondering- If there's a law enforcement awareness that during all that pendulum swinging, hundreds of men are sitting in prison because of coerced confessions.
Eric Robinson: Not if people aren't reflecting on it, a- and properly. And, and again, like with Burge's midnight crew, his ass-kickers, I'm, I have, I [00:14:00] assume that they had some reflection, but that reflection was justified. And so I can say for myself, there were times, very, very, very few, but I can think of one, where with the FBI, we were at a house to arrest someone.
So we, we have the right to, uh, go through the house to see if there's any place that a man might hide, and I saw agents opening desk drawers. And I'm like, "Buddy, he's not in a desk drawer." You know? If you find evidence there, uh, what do you, what do you propose to do with it? And, you know, that's, that's a violation.
It's not, it's not terrible, but it's the kind of thing that I, the next day, asked a colleague of mine who was on the team with me, "Did you see that?" He said, "Yes." And I said, "If you ever see me doing something like that or losing control, I want you to stop me. I want you to put your hand on my shoulder." [00:15:00] And then I waited for him to say the same thing, which he did.
And I can speak to what I experienced and what I saw and what I tried to do, which is to realize, humans can, especially FBI, we can be very entitled. We have power, and we think we deserve that, and it's very easy to just use it, spray it like a hose. I have power. You can do nothing about this. And so there has to be some type of governor within if there isn't a governor throughout above.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Yeah. Well, and I also think that, the culture of justification wins out against the culture of self-reflection. Yes. And that's not just an FBI situation or a CPD situation. It's basically all law enforcement. I mean, where do you think that comes from, and is it something that people who are more reflective can change about the culture?
Is it [00:16:00] something you have to leave the culture to start calling out?
Eric Robinson: I, I don't, I don't think you have to leave it. I agree, I agree with everything that you said. It's, it's human nature. I think it's often even more the nature of those in authority. It's self-preserving. I need to maintain this authority, this position, this power.
And It comes from the people who are there. So clearly there can be decent people who fall prey and are degraded in their soul over the years, things they've seen and experienced. And I could have been that too, but I wasn't, and I wanted to maintain throughout, let's be careful, you know, let's be aware of this.
So there's, there's often been cases where, I think we see it now, I've got a buddy who is in, uh, [00:17:00] DHS. He retired and then went back for the bonus, and he's, he's texting me. He goes, "This is, this is a shit show. Like, the guys here are untrained, acting wildly and foolishly." And he's a man I respect. It's difficult that he's doing what he's...
You know, in that institution now. But, uh, these are untrained people who don't have the same qualities, and so if you're going to, if you're gonna hire some rotten apples from the beginning, yeah, the barrel's gonna be tainted.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Yeah. I wanna stick with the complicity of your friend for a second, 'cause you said he left the institution and went back for the bonus, which again, human nature, makes sense to me. How do you hold the person you know with the operations you're seeing from DHS? Because is that... Like, going back to complicity, right? He might not agree with it. He might say it's a shit show. He's still in
Eric Robinson: there.
Very honestly, [00:18:00] uh, I, one, hope that he is never around those things, and I had counseled him too. I said, "Brother, you, you know, people hate your agency right now, so that's, that's dangerous to you. And it's also dangerous because of how some of the people around you might respond to that and draw you in." And so I just honestly hope that he's not presented with a situation where he has to decide to make a moral decision.
Because I, I'll be honest, up to that point in my career in working with him, I worked with him for 10 years, um, our decisions were moral, and they were easy because judges signed off, everything was checked. And now there is a Wild West scenario where I can tell you from things that you've seen and I've seen just on video, these are, these, these are illegal actions [00:19:00] in, in some of the cases that we're seeing.
It's a violation of people's Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment rights, so.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Right. And that's the thing, uh, is that I think as much as people like you and the good agents that you described can question, when it comes to having to make that moral decision, they have to toe the company line, so to speak.
For example, COINTELPRO was the FBI operating without oversight, right? Hoover ran that program for decades before anyone even knew about it. We know that from declassified documents. So what makes the current exposure a departure rather than a recycle?
Eric Robinson: Uh, I think that it's, it's, it's a return of the allowances.
So while there definitely are, you know, unquestionably abuses individually that happened in between the '50s and the 2020s, there's, [00:20:00] there's that allowance that comes from above. So you've got, you know, Nixon saying, "Go ahead. You're unleashed. There's no problem with you." And so- Mm ... "Yeah, great, I will." Hoover had power over politicians on top of that, so he, he could do what he wanted.
Agents could say, "I'm following my director's instructions. It's for the better good because we're keeping America safe from these terrorists." I mean, there's, there's so many allowances that are there, and if no one has oversight, if no one is correcting, then, you know, you have to wait till there's a congressional commission years later to say, "Hey, what you guys did was wrong."
So now I, I am going to assume you would agree that the gates are just opened for-
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Mm-hmm ...
Eric Robinson: officers to do, agents to do what they want, and now you're depending upon an individual to work against the group [00:21:00] mentality that might be there, and that is dangerous.
Paula (Host): Yeah. I can definitely see that.
, And I, agree that, that the, you know, shackles are off or however you want to put it. But, I don't necessarily see, that, there was a go ahead and do whatever you want and then a period of restraint and then a go ahead and do whatever you want.
I see it more as a Blanket on, blanket off. Maybe this is just the true colors.
Eric Robinson: Well, so, uh, my wife and I were having a discussion last night and we're talking about, uh, Flock cameras, which it's a growing system where these are on the streets and on buildings, and then law enforcement can buy a license to use these, where I can put in, uh, TVR 1017 Ohio plate, and bang, I have all the hits within a certain amount of time. No subpoena, no warrant.
You're in a public place and, and there are, there are con- [00:22:00] concerns about government surveillance. And for me, I look at it as I ha- I have used that for proper means to find criminals, to forward cases against bad people. And yet here's, you know, instances of abuse, guys looking up girlfriends, guys looking in, in private locations.
And it... And for me, it's, it is like anything. I had a gun. I could use my gun to do something bad. I could look up ex-girlfriends, you know, through databases as well. I chose not to. So- It's a matter of the, these, the abuse is always there. It's nascent. It's a virus, and it's a question of whether or not that virus comes live.
And these flock cameras, what went on in COINTELPRO, what has been going on recently, has always been there. [00:23:00] It is a matter of are you allowed to? What are you gonna do with this? What are good people gonna choose in these events?
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Yeah. I agree. And I, and I think one of the distinctions I wanna make is, you know, you mentioned at, at the onset that, you told your colleagues, that your oldest child came out as, as transgender, and you used the phrase, "like any office."
And I think what's important for me is that it's not any office. Like, for me, law enforcement and the FBI, or not just the FBI, law enforcement, the world system of law enforcement in America, is essentially about who belongs. It's controlling who belongs. And you know that, having joined in 2002 at the height of Islamophobia.
And so, yes, there were terrorists, but no, there was not a distinction. There was just a widespread [00:24:00] net over this group of people that didn't fit in the framework. And so I think that's what I'm struggling with, is that these aren't just people making decisions in an office and, but to your point, they're people with a gun.
Yeah. And when you try to apply human nature and justifying what's moral and all these other, uh, you know, political situations, it's different from just being in an office.
Eric Robinson: Well, right, and my reference was more, uh, just like any office of discussing topics and politics. But, yeah, I would concede that it's not your usual office because those of us in the FBI have more authority.
We can possibly open investigations on people that we shouldn't be. We could have, uh, you know, use that in retribution for something. That's always there. You know, uh, I [00:25:00] could even use it in a way of, like, just turning on my lights in somebody's neighborhood to give an image. Th- there's abuse that could always happen.
And all that I could say to that is whether it's me, the people I worked with, or a different group coming in, there's a great dependence upon those people making the right choices Myself having seen it, obviously going to be more biased because these are good people that I work with, friends. I trust in those people.
I have seen people do things that I didn't like, but that was refreshingly quite rare And the people that I saw working in the FBI are very different from those who make headlines in DC and make policy. And so, yeah, I've often said like the last thing that an FBI agent wants is a 202 [00:26:00] area code showing up on their phone because they just wanna do...
They just wanna get the, the drug dealer, the pimp, the doctor who's selling scripts. You know, they just wanna do this right thing, and very infrequently, if ever, are they said, "Oh, I'm going to do something bad." There's enough criminals for us to go after, let's just do that. The problem we come to, as you point out here, is now who's being called a criminal, and how much are we responding to that push to go after them?
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Yeah. And I don't, I don't think we're going to find an answer for that on this podcast.
Eric Robinson: No. Well, not a satisfying one. I, I mean, I'll say this. So in openness, under the Trump's first administration, Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, there were, uh, buildings, you know, destruction of property, some violence in the Black Lives Matter rallies.
And so they go, "Hey, go find [00:27:00] Antifa." And so we had a case on a guy who claimed to be an Antifa warrior, and for us at least in that point, we're looking at are you, are you going to try to create violence? And so that is that roadblock. That is the check that will be there i- of, yeah, we could be harassing him, and we tried not to be doing that, but ultimately, if, if there's no crime to be proven, w- you know, we can't prove a crime.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I wanna end here. You came into this conversation wanting people to see past the headlines to the people inside the FBI, and I think you've actually given them something harder and more valuable, which is a way of understanding how good people and a broken pattern or institution can occupy the same space.
So, and I don't think that closes anything, but I think it's more [00:28:00] honest than either the FBI is corrupt or the FBI is full of heroes. Yeah. So where... What are you sitting with with that?
Eric Robinson: Oh, m- much like I said with, you know, fr- my friend who had said inappropriate things about transgender kids and the parents who raise them, I know he's a great supportive person of me, and yet there's this.
There's this about him that he didn't apologize for, and I just go, "Okay. Uh, that is something I can get beyond, and I'm aware." I'm going to accept this about it. Um, so here's the FBI that could easily be used and has been used for harm, and yet there are many facets to it. And from my perspective, the great majority of those facets are good people trying to bring justice for victims.
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): That's great. Um, Eric, where can listeners find you? When is the book coming out?
Eric Robinson: The book [00:29:00] comes out in the fall. Uh, my wife's company, Weaving Influence, is publishing it. But people can find me on Instagram @_eric_robinson, on LinkedIn with my name and type FBI, or you can go to my website to follow along with the book, and that is preachertobreacher.com. Okay, great, and
Paula Lehman-Ewing (Host): I'll put all that in the show notes.
Um, Eric, thanks for sitting with these hard questions and for doing some of that self-reflection in real time. I know it's not something we do on air a lot, and so I appreciate your honesty. Thank you.
Eric Robinson: Thanks so much, Paula.